by Lora Leigh
The only thing that could make him say that phrase—there is no proof of a threat—in that way was his definite belief that there was a threat. And he feared Riordan would compound it to where she’d fear that without him she’d die. For a woman who had tried very hard to not make waves throughout her life, she was suddenly churning them up in a way she feared would drown her.
* * *
As the door closed behind her, Riordan turned his attention to her father, his temper simmering. He’d known Ivan would fight this, but still, it pissed him the hell off. As Grandpops rose and walked to the door, Riordan moved to the front of the desk, placed his palms carefully on the polished wood, and leaned closer.
“You’ve done everything you could to keep me away from her and it ends now. By God, stop playing your games with her or she’ll disappear, Ivan.” The snarl that curled his lips wasn’t quite voluntary. “I’ll make damn sure of it. Just as I’ll make damn sure you never fucking find her if you force me to make that choice.”
And he’d do it. Ivan knew he’d do it and he knew Riordan had the resources to ensure she stayed hidden. Ivan had used every trick possible to keep them apart, and the games were going to end. Now.
“You’re going to destroy her heart,” Ivan muttered.
“I’d like to think that if I were a father, I’d consider a broken heart fair exchange,” he snarled. “But my relationship with her is none of your damned business from here on out. Remember that one. Or I’ll remind you.”
Pulling back, he turned and stalked from the office, knowing exactly where he was going and what awaited him. Behind him, he heard the door close, and he was all too aware that his grandpops was still in that office.
Hell … he almost felt sorry for Ivan now.
chapter four
The committee meeting went more or less how Amara expected it. Phoebe Adelbarre did her very best to completely take over the meeting, including every decision concerning the final details of their annual Easter charity ball. The dozen other women there went from feelings of frustration to resignation where that battle was concerned.
By the end of the two-hour lunch Amara felt as though she’d been through a minor war, and she wasn’t certain if she’d won or lost. One day, she promised herself, she was going to manage to outmaneuver the Adelbarre matron if it killed her.
As she completed her notes on the meeting and finished up her to-do list, she laid aside her tablet and propped her elbow up on the small table. The maids had finished cleaning the meeting room nearly thirty minutes earlier, and Cook had taken away the last of the food from the lunch meeting.
Pushing her fingers through the shortened strands of her hair, she paused.
Six months ago, her hair had flowed thick and straight to the middle of her back. Now, it was no more than six or eight inches long, the back of it barely covering her nape. Rather than a heavy, straight ribbon, it was now a cap of lush curls.
Whoever had abducted her had not just nearly beaten her to death but had hacked her hair almost to her scalp. She pulled at the curls again, her eyes closing as a wave of pain and fear washed over her. Her breath hitched on a smothered sob and once again a sense of grief assailed her.
What had they done to her?
She couldn’t remember the abduction any more than she could remember the year before it had happened, except for bits and pieces of inconsequential memories and those too-damn-erotic dreams. Eleven and a half months of her life were missing and she couldn’t find a reason why. All she knew was the hollow grief she couldn’t seem to shake.
“You look like you need a drink.”
Her eyes opened in time to see the shot of whiskey the broad, sun-bronzed hand placed before her as Riordan straddled the opposite café chair he’d turned so he could place his arms across its low back.
Her gaze went back to the shot glass.
“Five o-clock somewhere, right?” she sighed before lifting the glass and taking the liquid in one swallow.
Heat spilled from her throat to her stomach, where it pooled then spread through her senses in a rush of warmth.
For a second, just a second, the cold chill she’d lived with for the past six months eased beneath the fiery lash of the liquor.
“What was it?” She stared at the empty shot glass before lifting her eyes to him, watching as his lips quirked in amusement.
“The finest Irish spirits made,” he confided, lowering his voice. “You can’t even buy anything that smooth.”
She set the glass on the table, then folded her arms, resting them in front of it as she stared back at him curiously. “So, you make your own?” Why wasn’t she surprised?
“Hell no.” He grinned, his deep blue eyes almost glowing in amusement as he made the admission. “I believe that might still be a shade illegal in the quantity I’d need. Cousins in Ireland make it. They’ve made it the same way for generations. They send their American cousins a couple of cases a year just for the hell of it.”
She doubted it was just for the hell of it and wondered what the cousins got in exchange.
“It’s good.” She had to compliment him as the warmth lingered through her senses.
“Grandpops keeps a bottle in his work shed and sneaks out every evening for a sip or two. Says it keeps him young.” Fondness touched his expression, softened it. “He still acts as though he’s hiding it from my grandmother, too, even though she’s been gone for a lot of years.”
“From what little I’ve seen, I have to agree something has.” Brushing back a curl that fell over her forehead, she looked down at her tablet, then turned her head to look out the window.
His eyes kept drawing her, holding her. It was uncomfortable. It tugged at that darkness in her mind and made her ache.
“Grandpops will be eighty-five in a few months.” His statement had her staring back at him in shock. “Go figure.” He chuckled. “Still drives himself everywhere he goes, unless I’m in the vehicle with him. He likes to speed.”
She shook her head in amazement before staring down at the table once again, uncertainty filling her.
“Poppa’s very angry. Perhaps Grandpops should return home,” she told him, lifting her head to stare back at him. “This is no place for a man his age.”
His brow lifted with deliberate mockery.
Dammit, she hated people who could do that on demand.
“You tell Grandpops to leave,” he suggested with the air of a man who was tired of arguing about it. “He insists on being here, and I know Grandpops. He is one stubborn man.”
It seemed it ran in the family.
“Poppa says there’s no threat.” She felt like boxing her father’s ears some days. “The abduction was six months ago. The rescue team killed the men who took me. Perhaps I’m just being paranoid.” She wanted to believe that. She really did.
She’d been at the estate since her release from the hospital. Six months filled with recuperating, nightmares, and fear. But there had been no threats against her. Just odd events.
Her eyes narrowed on him as he just stared back at her, his gaze somber, heavy.
“Has there been a threat that Poppa hasn’t told me about? Did he tell you anything?” She forced herself to ask the question.
Surely, he would tell her. He wouldn’t hold something like that back from her, would he?
“Other than I had no right to be here?” he snorted, a mocking curve to his lips. “There hasn’t been an additional threat that I’m aware of, but I believe he doesn’t consider the threat over. Until we know why and who, we can’t assume the danger has passed. And apparently, no one knows the answer to that but you,” he told her softly. “Do you remember the abduction?”
She considered refusing to answer. For a moment, she braced herself to jerk to her feet and stalk away from him. The air of familiarity, a certain knowledge in his expression, and a gleam of male hunger in those blue eyes stopped her.
She shook her head. “Nothing.” She didn’t even remember he
r nightmares unless Riordan was in them. “All I remember is you.”
Inhaling deeply, she fought back the fear, the panic, as well as the arousal. That wasn’t going to help her, it would only make it impossible to think.
There wasn’t an additional threat, she told herself, so there was no reason to panic
“Your father says you still have nightmares?” he questioned her again.
The roughened edge of his voice, that sinful sound, shouldn’t be discussing death, it should be whispering erotic phrases and sexually explicit demands, she thought inanely.
For a second, she could feel a rising anger toward him but didn’t know why.
“I never remember the nightmares.” She reached for the shot glass and began rolling it between her fingers as she stared into it.
She didn’t remember the images that brought her awake screaming, but she remembered the grief. The terrible heaviness in her chest, the knowledge that she’d lost something that left her broken inside.
“Have you wondered why?” he asked her.
Her gaze shot back to his, the anger she always fought at the thought of those nightmares rising inside her.
“What do you think, Riordan?” she snapped. “Do you think I just flit through my day without wondering what the hell happened? That I don’t care that I lost a year of my life or why I lost it?” Anger tore at her. “Do you think I don’t care about the men who risked their lives to rescue me?”
She came to her feet so fast that the chair she was sitting in nearly toppled over. She hadn’t realized she was shaking—whether from anger or fear, she didn’t know.
Echoes of grief and pain, fear … We’re losing him!
Choking back her tears, she fought to hold onto her sanity. That single cry, harsh, filled with fury, was all she remembered. But her father assured her no one had died. They hadn’t lost anyone.
But would he tell her the truth? He’d always fought to protect her, not just from danger but from the truth of whatever his life and his business truly was, but would he lie to her about that?
Riordan rose as well, his expression tight as he watched her closely, his gaze brooding, suspicious.
“You’ve stopped the sessions with the therapist your father hired. You refuse to discuss it with anyone. I think you don’t want to remember,” he accused her, standing there, staring at her as though she should be spouting information like a damn robot.
“You’re crazy!” The cry was ripped from her. How dare he say something like that to her. She didn’t want to remember? “Do you think I enjoy missing a year of my life? That I don’t want to know who stole that time from me or why?”
“No. I don’t believe you do,” he said bluntly, the arrogance and complete certainty in his expression infuriating her. “And it makes me wonder why you bothered to even remember me in your dreams.”
She could only stare at him furiously, her fingers curling into fists to keep from slapping that knowing look from his face.
“And I believe you need to go to hell!” She was so furious she was shaking, torn between clawing his eyes out and …
She took a hasty step back as she realized she was reaching for him and didn’t even know why. Not that it mattered, because as she reached out, he finished the move and jerked her into his arms.
“I lived in hell for six fucking months, calling this house, being told you weren’t taking my calls,” he snapped, one hand burying in the back of her hair, his head lowering until his lips brushed hers. “And by God I’m not waiting any longer.”
She was burning for him. Her breasts ached, her nipples hardened until they were little points trying to push through the material covering them.
His knee slid between her legs, his thigh settling against the sensitive flesh between her thighs and exciting the little bud of her clit.
“Riordan…” Just that fast, she was weak, arousal burning through her, ripping past her defenses.
Staring up at him, his eyes darkening, the sapphire deepening, she knew whatever he wanted in that moment, she’d willingly give him.
“Amara,” he whispered against her lips, caressing them, teasing her before smoothing across her cheek to her ear.
Once there, he nipped at the lobe, stroked over it with his tongue, then caught it between his teeth to worry it with a sensual, highly erotic grip.
“What did I do to you in your dreams, Amara? Did I let you run from me? Or did I show you all the reasons you didn’t want to run?”
Before she could answer him, his lips were taking her. He was voracious in his demand. Hungry, determined. He nipped at her lips, then his tongue soothed the slight pain. A second later it pushed past her lips in demand, sweeping over hers, sweeping aside any objections, any fears.
There was no fear here, no panic, just complete pleasure. She moaned at the heat and demanding possession as his hand gripped her head, holding her still as his lips slanted over hers and the kiss deepened.
“Damn, what you do to me.” He jerked back, the graveled sound of his voice sending a rush of heat straight to her vagina. “Oh baby, I love getting drunk on the taste of you.”
Her lips parted, a plea for more on them when he drew back, releasing her slowly.
What could she say? Do? She wanted more, craved more, and if she stood there another second, she’d be begging for more.
Swinging away from him, she hurried from the room, desperate to escape, to get as far away from him as possible. Him and whatever it was he was doing to her. Whatever he was doing to make the darkness claw at her mind and her own screams echo in her head. She was crazy to have done this. She should have never gone looking for him or allowed him to kiss her. And all she wanted now was more, the dominance and the sheer erotic thrill only he could give her.
And that terrified her almost as much as the nightmares and the danger she knew had returned.
* * *
Riordan wanted to hit something.
It was all he could do to smother the curses that rose to his lips and threatened to slip free, let alone keep from putting his fist through a wall. To keep from following her.
If he followed, he was going to take her, though, and damned if he had the control to go easy on her. He wanted to push her against a wall and take her like a fucking animal. Hear the cries of pleasure, the pleas he knew that would spill from her lips as she begged for more.
And he had too much to do before he could allow himself the time for that. Too many things to put in place, to ensure her protection.
“Son of a fucker,” he snarled, swinging around to stare through the window into the bleak winter landscape as his hands went to his hips.
Hanging his head, he stared at the floor, the stone floor with its swirled green-to-gray pattern.
God, the pain in her eyes when she’d reached for him.
The fear.
He couldn’t follow her, couldn’t ease her needs or the horrors that haunted her nightmares. Because God forbid if she knew what she was to him, what she meant to him.
“It’s too soon, Riordan,” Grandpops said quietly behind him, his voice filled with compassion, with far too much knowledge.
Too soon. It was too soon to tell her, too soon to explain why she only remembered him in her dreams, in the fantasies that filled her. That tormented him.
“You didn’t see her eyes, Grandpops.” He pushed his fingers through his hair and clenched his teeth as the anger threatened to overwhelm him. “I should have been there when she woke in the hospital. I should have been beside her…”
He should have fought harder …
“Kinda hard to do when you’re fighting to live,” his grandfather snorted, that shade of Irish in his voice heavier than normal. “Noah’s worried ya came too soon the way it is. Says ya lied ’bout the doctor releasin’ ya back last month.”
Noah worried like a damn mother hen.
“I didn’t lie.” He met the older man’s look in the window. “I wouldn’t have returned if I wasn’t s
trong enough to protect her. I would have made sure of it.”
Grandpops snorted at that, his gaze shadowed with disbelief. “Ya would have come to her on yer deathbed if ya coulda.”
He couldn’t argue with that. Hell, he’d tried to come to her as he lay half dead. A bullet to the chest, one to his side, and one to his lower back had nearly done him in. For a month, the doctors weren’t certain they’d keep him out of a wheelchair, let alone whether he’d be strong enough to return to any kind of heavy work.
He hadn’t had a choice but to get back in shape, to rebuild his strength and pass the physical requirements. He’d known. A part of him had known that this wasn’t over. Not his relationship with her, or the danger edging closer once again.
“I nearly lost her,” he said quietly. “I shouldn’t have waited for her to find me. I should have returned to her instead.”
His damnable pride had held him back. He’d called, only to be told she refused to talk to him by whichever servant answered the phone. And he’d refused to call Ivan. The son of a bitch had been part of the reason he and Amara had argued the night before he flew to England.
“She came far closer to losin’ ya, boy.” The rough growl in his grandfather’s voice reminded Riordan that Amara wouldn’t have been the only one who would have felt that loss. “We all did. And those are days I’m not wantin’ to revisit.”
“I’m fine.” Riordan shook his head, dropping his hands from his hips, and turned to face the man who had been both grandfather and father all his life. “Noah worries like a mother hen since the babies started coming.”
As always, the subject of his great-grandchildren distracted his grandpops.
“Aye, little Noah’s hopin’ for a brother this time. Says he needs help in keepin’ up with our wee Erin and Aislinn.” Amusement filled his grandpops’ face. “Bella said she dreads to see the boy’s face should the little one be a girl.”
