by Christa Wick
His tone dropped to a speculative level that made bile rise up my throat and into my mouth. "Tell me, Mia, did I give you a taste for getting beat on?"
"Release her."
I couldn't imagine anyone, not even my stepfather, being stupid enough to ignore the edge in Collin Stark's voice. Evan hesitated to comply. That's when I saw Stark thread an arm across his throat, the massive bicep and forearm working together to squeeze Evan's airway shut.
My stepfather released me. Collin slammed him against the wall. Holding his palm against the center of Evan's chest, he stared unblinking into his eyes.
"Any injury to her," Collin warned, "and I'll take a month in killing you. Open fractures, someplace dirty so that the bacteria gets in and starts to eat you from both sides, you'll beg to die long before I let you."
Grabbing a fistful of Evan's shirt, Collin slung him away from the house. Sprawling in the dirt and fallen pine needles, Evan stumbled to his feet, his gaze on the cab of his truck. Ignoring the rifle on the window rack, Collin moved his jacket to one side to reveal a long-barreled handgun. He tilted his chin up, acknowledging the rifle at last as a half smile crept along his face.
"You'll want to wait until you have a clear shot at my back," he taunted.
Froth played at the edge of Evan's lips. He wiped a shaking hand across his mouth then spit in my direction, his gaze bloodshot and furious. "You don't bring this shit onto my land, Mia."
Collin moved until he blocked Evan's view of me. "The shit was already on your land, old man."
A card flicked down at my stepfather's feet. "You don't talk her anymore. You have something to say, you say it to the voice on the end of that line."
I thought Evan would leave the card in the dirt but he scooped it up before hobbling to his truck. He climbed in, the engine turning over a few seconds later. Pedal to the floor, he pulled a hard left, sending dirt and pebbles spraying in the direction of the door. Collin already filled the open frame, the debris pelting the back of his leather jacket as he forced me inside.
"You're packing -- now."
"I'm not leaving." I pushed at his hands, my skin tingling so badly it burned wherever the pressure of his touch landed. "This is my home."
Letting go of me, he scooped my phone up, cancelled the partial call and pocketed the device. He looked at me, the shape of his flaring nostril and flattened mouth softening from angry to reminiscent. His lips rolled for half a second then he shook his head like he was flinging off raindrops or a troubling thought.
Looking down, I saw the folds of flannel that made up my nightgown, the pattern not too different from the one I had worn that night in Dubai -- the night I had conceived.
Shut that thought down, Mia!
I shoved my hand at him. "Give me my phone."
Ignoring the demand, he walked around the living room, stopping in front of the bins marked "salvage" and "ruined." He bent down, his hand reaching for the nearest container.
"Don't touch those!"
Without a second's hesitation, he ignored me and ripped the lid off the bin of ruined items. He fingered through the top layer for a few seconds then looked over his shoulder at me.
"I can't imagine you leaving these behind."
"I didn't," I bit out. Tears tracked slowly down my cheeks.
"He didn't let you have your family keepsakes when you left?"
Ignoring the question, I shoved my arm in his direction, my hand twitching and jumping with the need to possess the phone. Relenting, he pulled it from his pocket and returned it to me.
I snatched it to my chest. "Now get out."
He looked at the box again, his gaze seemingly focused on a runny picture of me at six, my forehead against Corabelle's as I fed her an apple. "NSA has these algorithms--"
"You can't fix it." I pointed at the door, my chest rapidly rising and falling as I verged on hyperventilating. I didn't need this bullshit. I had to deal with the sociopath my mother had married. I needed my energy focused on rebuilding my life. Collin couldn't keep showing up and kicking over my building blocks like a toddler throwing a tantrum.
He didn't want me and he had to stop acting like he gave a damn!
Collin recovered the bin then walked toward me. Stumbling around the furniture, I took a step back for each one he took forward until I came up against the wall. He stopped, a few inches separating our torsos, and pressed his palms flat against the worn paint on each side of my head. He held his arms up high enough I could duck under one if my legs weren't frozen.
He closed the pocket of air between us, his thick, muscular chest pushing against my soft breasts and stomach. Blue eyes focused on me like laser beams as he recanted yesterday's denial in a raspy voice. "You can have home office."
Home office, where I could watch all the little gestures between him and his new secretary in real life instead of on television. Home office, where he could pass me in the hall with the same bored, indifferent look he had affected at the restaurant and in my first month working directly under him. Home office, where what was left of my self-esteem would be ground to dust far faster than Reed Henley and the Florida office could accomplish.
I stared into the blue eyes, hoping he couldn't sense my body's reaction. My nipples had puckered beneath the smooth flannel, the sensation of the fabric rubbing over my skin as he pushed against me a glorious torture. Heat flared over every inch of skin, my bare toes curling against the cold wood floor. My thighs flexed, everything in that zone pulling tight with need and neglect even as a sheen of moisture covered my eyes and thickened.
I shook my head. "I told you I wouldn't take home office."
He leaned closer, increasing the pressure on my nipples and lower stomach. Eyes shut, he rubbed his forehead lightly back and forth against mine. "What will you take?"
What was he offering? More rejection most likely. If my being at home office would have been too awkward yesterday, how could my being in his arms or his bed be any less awkward? He had said "no" yesterday because he didn't want me around him or didn't want me hurt from seeing his disinterest in me on a daily basis.
Another swing of his foot, more blocks toppled. I needed to start all over with a new foundation -- one that didn't have any mysteries in it. It wouldn't bring me back to Stark International, wouldn't even get me out of the guesthouse and away from Evan, but I would make him tell me what had happened in that makeshift hospital room in Dubai.
"The truth," I whispered.
As if he knew the exact question coming, Collin tensed against me.
"Open your eyes." I pushed at his chest until he allowed a small gap between our bodies. "Tell me if there was a baby, whether I miscarried."
I knew the answer with the way his breath thinned to nothing and he stopped breathing altogether, but I had to hear it from his mouth. I slapped his chest with a loosely closed fist. "Open your eyes and answer, damn it!"
He obeyed and I thought, for a second, that I saw the blue pools of his irises awash in tears, but my vision was too blurry for me to tell. He swallowed, his forehead moving against mine in a nod.
"Yes, you miscarried, lo--" He pulled back, his hands still caging me in. "I thought it would be easier on you if you didn't know."
My loose fist balling tight, I raised my hand even with my collarbone. "Thought what would be easier on me?"
"Your leaving."
He moved one hand to stroke the side of my head but I evaded him, my fist landing twice on his chest in rapid succession. "I didn't leave!"
How could I have left when he cast me out!
Collin captured the hand assaulting him, holding me by the wrist and pulling me to him. His face pressed against my neck, a million neurons firing inside my head at the contact. My legs threatened to fold if he didn't release me immediately.
"No!" I jerked, pushed, fighting both his attempt to hold me and the memories of being in his arms that made my limbs numb and unresponsive as my brain ordered my body to flee.
"I didn't
leave," I accused again. "I didn't leave and it didn't help."
"I'm sorry, baby."
He tried to capture my head and I knew he would kiss me if he did. I didn't trust why he would do so, couldn't imagine myself trusting his motivations ever again.
"Stop hurting me," I begged, my voice quivering as it built in volume. "Get out and stop hurting me!"
His hands fell to his sides. Sensing a moment's vulnerability in Collin, I started pushing and slapping him toward the door, tears streaming down my face.
"Get out, get out, get out!"
He didn't try to shield himself against my blows or otherwise stop me until he stood on the outside of the open door.
"I can't leave until I know you're safe from your stepfather."
His hands lifted as if he would catch the door before I could close it. I shook my head, warning him not to try.
"I don't care what you do." I slammed the door inward, my gaze locked on his quickly disappearing face. "Just don't let me see you."
"You won't," he promised with a whisper.
Chapter Twelve
Collin
For an hour after the door slammed in my face, I watched from within the treeline that overlooked Mia's little house. An hour was how long it took her to both break down and call Deputy Gillie and for him to arrive. In uniform but driving his personal vehicle, he had to coax her into letting him inside. He leaned against the doorframe as he persuaded her, a certain intimacy in his manner that made my gums ache.
I hadn't received any fresh intel from Kane on Mia's life in Keeling in over fifteen hours. That meant my knowledge of Gillie came from the hundred-dollar "tip" I'd given the waitress at the roadhouse. I had no idea how well Mia knew Gillie from before she left Keeling. He could have been the first man to part her legs and sample her sweet stores or the one she had dreamt of opening to.
At least she hadn't let him stay last night or any real amount of time. His interior security check had lasted no more than fifteen minutes before she pushed him out the door -- far more gently than she had ousted me and with a smiling laugh instead of tears.
As far as competition went, I liked Deputy Gillie a lot less than old man Keppler.
I watched as he slowly worked his way inside. Her face told me she was hurting. A ruthless part of me was glad. It meant she still had feelings for me. Then the sane part of me reared up and I remembered I didn't want her to have feelings for me. If Gillie sat her down on the couch, wrapped his arms around her, stroked her hair and she let him, not once thinking about me, that would be a good thing.
It would hurt like hell, but it would be a good thing.
With both of them inside and the door shut, I finished securing a remote camera to the tree I had watched from. I checked the video feed on my phone, then shouldered the small gear bag that had kept me company through a cold night outdoors.
Gillie would get Mia safely off the property, hopefully for her to file a complaint against her stepfather, but at least for her to go to work. By the time she was done at the hardware store, I would have four men watching her in teams of two while I worked on removing Evan Morris without killing him or getting him put on the terrorist watch list and sunk in a dark hole for the next five years while the mistake was worked out.
Walking through the trees to where I had left the SUV, I dialed my second in command.
"Morning, Griffin."
The false sunshine in his voice put me immediately on guard. I had left him with orders yesterday, tasks to do that were not yet done because the four-man team should have had their boots on the ground in Keeling yesterday evening. I had ordered a background check on Gillie and half a dozen other items.
"Where's my team?" My heart rate accelerated like I was stepping into a boxing ring with Trent but I kept it out of my voice.
"Your team?"
"You better be getting a blow job or having a fucking seizure if you can't remember the team I ordered--"
"My memory isn't at question, brother."
I heard him lean back in the overstuffed leather chair he kept in his office. His use of "brother" made my teeth grind. Not that he didn't have a right to call me such. I was closer to him than the siblings I had grown up with. Our blood had mixed on battle fields. We were brothers, but the word told me things were about to get personal in a way I wouldn't like.
"You remember when you went on the warpath in Dubai, the protocols you set up for your absence?"
He had stopped moving in the chair just as I had stopped walking along the ground strewn with pine needles. Of course I remembered the protocols. After the injury to Mia and the attempt on my life, I had gone on the hunt for the men who had planned and executed it. For six weeks I had been in constant danger of being taken prisoner by those I pursued or the sheiks whose laws I defied. In custody, the information in my head would have been able to unlock the servers on Stark International and thereby bring down entire governments, if not countries. Accounts worth billions could have been drained -- the whole company could have imploded within hours.
"You activated them?" My grip on the phone tightened, the plastic casing creaking from the pressure I wanted to apply to Kane's throat.
"And improvised a few others." He shifted, the prolonged sound of the leather protesting and the angle of the air traveling over his vocal chords making me picture him leaning far forward as if he were virtually getting up in my face as he had done so many times in the past. "There's an open ticket at the Martin County airport for your return. No one here is taking your calls but me and all your accounts are closed except for the LINT fund."
I snorted. The LINT fund was so named because it had twenty-thousand in it. Pocket lint meant for minor tight spots. Cutting me off from my money meant nothing. Not all of my accounts were legal, at least not in the United States. They didn't hold the billions he had just cut me off from with a few keystrokes, but several days of navigating a network of banks would open up millions. More than money, I needed highly skilled human resources -- both in the field protecting Mia and the programming jocks running intel algorithms to make connections between Morris and anything that would put him in jail. I needed the software and hardware resources of Stark International.
"It's my company," I growled.
"Then come home," he answered. "Fire my ass, kick it. Choice is yours. Until then, you have to work your Mia issues out on your own, no more proxies. This needs to end now. I don't care if you fuck her or forget her, your head hasn't been in the game since the bomb in Dubai."
That wasn't true but I didn't correct him. My head had been in the game after the bomb, all the way up until the doctor told me Mia had miscarried. And I wouldn't fire Trent, there wasn't any other person I trusted more to run my company in my absence. We were cut from the same steel, forged in the same fire and sharpened by the same rough hands of the cadre at Fort Bragg.
But, as much as I loved him, the same held true for Kane as for Morris -- if his actions caused Mia injury, I would take a month killing him.
Without another word, I hung up and dialed Kessa's number as I resumed walking toward the SUV. The first ring was followed by an almost imperceptible click. I froze as the phone rang a second time before the call was answered.
"I told you no one is taking your calls."
Only because he was making the Stark communication servers re-route any call from my cell -- and probably the entire area code of Martin County -- to his phone. With Kessa, Reed and any other resource I could think of willing to redirect a resource my way having company phones, I would keep coming up against the brick wall of Trent Kane.
Heat flushed my cheeks as an angry sweat began to bead beneath my clothes.
"Mia is in danger, Trent. Just as real as Dubai."
He sucked in air through his teeth then snorted it out his nose. "Can't think of a better motivator, brother. There's a ticket at the airport for her, too. Tell her the truth, get down on your fucking knees and beg, tell her you love her and were stupid
and wrong, give her that damn ring you've had around your neck for the last four months..."
Kane was wrong. I needed to eliminate the threat Morris posed, just as I had eliminated members of the Holy Front and the minor princeling who had funded their terrorist cell. I needed it done before any harm came to Mia, including the soul deep hurt she seemed to experience the instant her eyes landed on me.
Expediency would only come with company resources. To get them, I had to undermine Kane's confidence, make him doubt an earlier decision so he would doubt having initiated the protocols and return control to me without my leaving Mia unprotected to straighten things out.
"You fucked up putting her under Reed," I accused.
That earned me a hiss.
"I had to think about the company, too, had to keep the affair and your...tastes...from winding up on the front page on the National Enquirer or an actual fucking newspaper."
"You mean our tastes, brother," I pressed. "Your mistake was telling him the whole story. You should have known he would keep her at arm's length, and that everyone around him would fall into line."
I heard the hard slap of flesh hitting leather and pictured Kane punching his chair.
"What did you want me to do, let him find out from her?" Anger bubbled over in his voice. "You really want to do that to him after everything he went through with Katherine? Why don't you just ask me to put a gun to his head and pull the fucking trigger?"
"You still fucked up." He hadn't, not on either count, but I couldn't back down without losing the larger argument that I desperately needed to win. "If you couldn't put her there without telling him, you should have found another solution."
"Fuck you, Stark." A moment's silence was followed by the sound of his back hitting the seat cushion and a breathy chuckle. "I'm not deactivating the protocol. You want your company and the resources to protect the woman you love, come back and fight me for them."
The line went dead. Propelled by my fist, my phone bounced off the nearest pine tree. My knees hit the ground, all the adrenaline I'd bottled up during the phone call overloading my system at once.
