by J. S. Scott
ALSO BY J.S. SCOTT
The Sinclairs
The Billionaire’s Christmas (A Sinclair Novella)
The Billionaire’s Obsession
Mine for Tonight
Mine for Now
Mine Forever
Mine Completely
Heart of the Billionaire—Sam
Billionaire Undone—Travis
The Billionaire’s Salvation—Max
The Billionaire’s Game—Kade
Billionaire Unmasked—Jason
The Sentinel Demons
A Dangerous Bargain
A Dangerous Hunger
Big Girls and Bad Boys
The Curve Ball
The Beast Loves Curves
Curves by Design
The Pleasure of His Punishment: Stories
The Changeling Encounters
Mate of the Werewolf
The Danger of Adopting a Werewolf
All I Want for Christmas Is a Werewolf
The Vampire Coalition
Ethan’s Mate
Rory’s Mate
Nathan’s Mate
Liam’s Mate
Daric’s Mate
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2015 J.S. Scott
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle
www.apub.com
ISBN-13: 9781477849736
ISBN-10: 1477849734
Cover design by Laura Klynstra
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014916986
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
EPILOGUE
AUTHOR ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER 1
It was completely annoying that it had been sunny and bright on the day of Patrick’s funeral. Not one single cloud in the sky as a sea of men in uniform, their badges all covered with a black horizontal stripe to mark the loss of one of their own, milled around a cemetery. Their expressions were solemn, and many of them were visibly sweating from wearing heavy uniforms in the Southern California heat.
Detective Dante Sinclair’s eyes were riveted to the screen as he watched the video on his laptop computer, a huge lump in his throat as he listened to the customary last radio call go out for Detective Patrick Brogan, unanswered. Patrick was officially proclaimed to be 10-7, out of service, and the dispatcher declared how much he would be missed.
Dante gulped for air as he slammed the laptop closed, wishing like hell that it had been a shitty, rainy day during the funeral. Somehow it didn’t seem fair that the services had been held on just the kind of day Patrick had loved, and he hadn’t been there to enjoy it. It was the sort of weather that would have had Patrick itching to be out fishing. Instead, he’d been dead, entombed in a casket covered by a US flag, unable to enjoy one single thing he loved ever again.
Casting the laptop off the bed, not caring whether it shattered into pieces, he sat up, unconcerned with the pain it caused him to do so. Christ! He hadn’t even been able to attend his own partner’s funeral because he’d still been in the hospital. But he’d been compelled to watch it. Patrick had been his partner and a member of Dante’s homicide team for years. He’d also been the closest friend Dante had ever had.
It should have been me who died. Patrick had a wife, a teenage son who was left behind without a father.
Hell, Karen and Ben, Patrick’s wife and son, had practically adopted him, having him over for dinner almost every night when he and Patrick could actually manage to catch dinner—which wasn’t often. Their jobs kept them out at all hours, especially in the evenings. Murder rarely happened during the daytime hours in his district.
Karen and Ben will never have to worry about money. It won’t make up for the loss of Patrick, but it will help.
Dante had resolved any financial problems for Karen and Ben by donating several million dollars to a fund for the Brogan family anonymously, but it wouldn’t bring back the man they loved, the husband, the father. It seemed like a pitifully small thing to do considering he had plenty of money and would never miss it.
Although he and Patrick had gotten promoted to detective at the same time, Dante’s partner had been well over a decade older, and a hell of a lot wiser than Dante had been back then. Patrick had taught a hotheaded new detective patience when Dante had none, and he’d helped Dante become a better man in more ways than he could count.
Christ! It should have been me! Why wasn’t I standing where Patrick was standing when the shooter opened up and fired?
He and Patrick had been so close—so damn close—to nailing a murderer who had raped and killed three women in their rough, gang-populated division. They had been tailing the suspect on the street, waiting for backup to arrive to arrest the subject. The murderer had gotten sloppy on his last victim, leaving behind enough DNA evidence to finally arrest the bastard.
Swinging his legs painfully over the side of the bed, Dante relived the last few moments of Patrick’s life, flashing back to the instant when he’d lost his best friend.
He and Patrick staying close enough to keep the suspect in their sight.
The piercing sirens nearby screeching through the air.
The suspect suddenly panicking and pulling out a semiautomatic pistol and starting to shoot.
Why the suspect had suddenly cracked at that moment was still a mystery. The sirens had probably spooked a murderer who already knew the law was on his tail and closing in. Ironically, the sirens had had nothing to do with them taking down a murderer. They’d been wailing for a completely separate incident. Like the police were really going to announce they were coming for the asshole? Still, it had been enough to send the suspect over the edge, shooting at anyone or anything behind him without warning.
Patrick had been the first to fall, with one bullet through the head. Dante had pulled out his Glock as he took several bullets from the shooter at close range, shielding Patrick with his larger body until he’d managed to get a kill shot in on the asshole shooter. At the time, Dante hadn’t realized it was already too late for Patrick. The bullet through the head had killed his partner instantly. Luckily, the few civilians who had been hanging around on the street during the early morning hours had scattered, leaving Dante the only one injured—Patrick and the suspect both dead.
He’d been wearing his vest, but the close-range shots had caused Dante some blunt-force trauma. However, it had saved his life, leaving him with only some cracked ribs instead of bullets through his chest. The shot to his face hadn’t entered his skull, but he did have a nasty wound to his right cheek that extended up to his temple. The bullet to his right leg had passed through the flesh of his thigh, putting him in surgery after the incident, but it hadn’t shattered the bone. The one to his left arm had just been a graze.
Lucky bastard!
Dante could almost hear his partner
’s voice saying those exact words to him jokingly, but he was feeling far from fortunate at the moment. He’d been injured badly enough to spend a week in the hospital, unable to attend Patrick’s funeral, unable to say a final good-bye to his best friend. Karen and Ben had visited him after his surgery, Patrick’s wife tearfully telling him how glad Patrick would have been that Dante had survived, and actually thanking him for trying to protect her husband. Neither one of them blamed Dante for what had happened to their beloved husband and father, yet Dante couldn’t get past the fact that he wished it would have been him instead of his partner, that he had somehow let Patrick down by not being the one to die.
Survivor’s guilt.
That’s what the department psychologist was calling it, telling Dante it was common, considering the circumstances. That comment had made Dante want to send the little head-shrinking bastard across the room with his fist. What the hell was normal about wishing himself dead?
“You okay?” His brother Grady’s low, concerned voice came from the doorway of the small bedroom. “Need anything? We’re only about an hour out from landing. I thought I heard something crash in here.”
It was ironic that Dante and his siblings had always wanted to protect Grady—too often unsuccessfully—from being the primary target of their alcoholic, abusive father. And now Grady was the brother who was trying to take care of him. Every single one of his siblings had been at the hospital in Los Angeles, flying in as soon as they had heard that he was injured. But he was going home with Grady to his vacation home in Maine, a house Dante owned but had only seen briefly a few times since it had been constructed. Every one of the Sinclair siblings had a home on the Amesport Peninsula, but only Grady had actually made his house a permanent home. Dante hoped he could escape there, stop reliving the last moments of Patrick’s life in his nightmares. Right now the only thing he could see every time he closed his eyes was Patrick dying.
At the time, Dante hadn’t realized that Patrick was taking his last breath as his friend hit the ground with a gasp, his eyes still open and his head covered in blood. Now that he did know, Dante couldn’t stop seeing that horrifying vision over and over again in his mind.
They were currently in flight on Grady’s private jet, making their way from Los Angeles to Amesport, Maine. They’d be landing in a small airport outside of the city limits.
“I could use a beer,” Dante told Grady in a tortured voice, not looking at his brother as he buried his face in his hands. “Ouch! Shit!” Dante moved his hands away, the pain of the still-tender wound on his face irritated by his actions.
“Alcohol and painkillers don’t mix,” Grady mentioned calmly as he picked up the laptop from the floor. Miraculously, the computer was still working, and Grady frowned as he opened the top and saw what his brother had been viewing. “You were watching the funeral? We were all there, Dante. I know you feel like shit because you couldn’t be there. Every one of us went for you because you couldn’t.”
They all had, and the fact that his brothers and sister had attended the funeral for him while he was laid up in the hospital, to pay their last respects to a man they never even knew, touched him deeper than they would ever know. They’d stood in his place, united in their support of him at Patrick’s funeral. It had meant a hell of a lot, but . . .
“I had to see it myself.” Dante looked up at his older brother, his expression stony. “And I’m not taking the painkillers.” Maybe it was stupid, but feeling the pain of his injuries seemed to somehow make him feel less guilty that he was still alive. If he was fucking hurting, he was paying the price of still being alive while Patrick was buried six feet under.
The psychologist thought he was having self-destructive thoughts.
Dante didn’t give a shit.
“Hold on,” Grady answered gravely, leaving briefly and coming back with a bottle of beer. He screwed off the top and handed it to Dante. “It’s not exactly the healthiest thing for you to have right now, but I doubt it will do much harm.”
Tossing his head back, Dante took a gulp of the cold liquid, letting it slide down his throat, suddenly questioning the intelligence of doing so. The taste brought back a flood of memories, all of them about the many times over the years that he and Patrick had hung out together having a beer. He finished it quickly as Grady watched him pensively, handing the empty bottle back to his brother after he drained it. “Thanks.”
Grady took the bottle from Dante’s hand with an uneasy scowl. “Are you okay?” he asked again in a husky voice. “I know your wounds hurt like hell, but they’ll heal. That’s not what I’m asking. I need to know if you’re okay.”
Dante stared at his older brother, the concern on Grady’s face nearly breaking him. Although the Sinclair siblings had all scattered to different areas of the country after they’d left their hellish childhood and adolescence behind, the affection they all had for each other had never died. They might only get together on rare occasions, but they all still cared. He had seen it in every one of his siblings’ eyes at the hospital.
The anxiety and distress that was lodged deeply in Grady’s gray eyes finally made Dante admit for the first time, “No. I don’t think I am.”
Patrick was dead. Dante wished he had died in his place. His body was racked with pain, and everything inside him was cold and dark.
Right at that moment, as his anguished eyes locked with his older brother’s, Dante wasn’t sure he would ever be okay again.
CHAPTER 2
“Did you read my column today?”
Dr. Sarah Baxter bit her lip to keep from smiling as she looked at her elderly female patient, still sitting on an exam table after a routine visit. Elsie Renfrew was eccentric, but she was also a member of the Amesport City Council, and the biggest gossip in town, so she was far from demented. Sarah had grown very fond of the older woman, but she knew just how wily she actually was, and that Elsie knew the personal business of almost every resident in Amesport. Most people in town called her Elsie the Informer, but Mrs. Renfrew had enough power and clout locally that nobody would dare mention that moniker to the venerable woman face-to-face. Sarah rather admired the older woman’s spunk, but she found herself constantly and carefully monitoring anything she said to the chirpy, inquisitive woman. Even a casual comment about another Amesport resident was likely to end up in Elsie’s What’s Happening in Amesport column of the Amesport Herald if there was even a hint of juicy information. Sarah might admire the fact that her patient was over the age of eighty and still so active in the community, but she’d also readily admit that Mrs. Renfrew terrified the hell out of her sometimes. Just the slightest slip and the seemingly sweet woman would twist the information around and make it the subject of town gossip. Not that Elsie was mean-spirited. She just felt it was her duty to report any news in Amesport since her roots in the area went back to the time the town was founded.
“No, Mrs. Renfrew, I haven’t had a chance to read the paper today.” Sarah knew she was blatantly lying, but she quickly justified that fibbing was better than the possible alternative. She’d read the newspaper this morning at breakfast, including Elsie’s article titled “Another Sinclair Hottie Returns to Amesport Wounded.” If there was one thing Sarah definitely didn’t want Mrs. Renfrew to know, it was that she knew way more about that situation than anyone else in town—except for the so-called rich hottie’s family.
“Now, honey, I told you to call me Elsie ages ago.” The tiny gray-haired woman patted Sarah on the arm and hopped nimbly to the ground, her sneakers absorbing most of the impact. Amazingly, Elsie still looked elegant, even though she was dressed in white sneakers and a red sweat suit.
Sarah sighed as she snaked a hand out to catch the woman around her upper arm to make sure she was steady. She still wasn’t used to the informality around the friendly coastal town of Amesport. “You did tell me that. I’m sorry, Elsie.” Even after nearly a year of practicing here, Sarah still had a hard time calling her patients by their first names
if they requested it, and had realized that she actually got to know them well enough that every one of her patients preferred it.
She’d done her residency in internal medicine and first year of practice in Chicago, rarely seeing a patient for very long before moving on to the next one. Her focus had been on hospitalized patients, so she’d rarely had a chance to get to know any of them personally, except for a few who required extensive hospitalization.
Sarah shuddered, a reaction she had every time she thought about even entering a hospital now.
“I kind of thought you might end up being the doctor who is seeing to Dante Sinclair’s injuries when he gets here.” Elsie raised an eyebrow with a sly look on her face. “It’s not like we have very many doctors here.”
Sarah shook her head, focusing her attention on her patient. “Even if I was his doctor, Elsie, I couldn’t tell you. Patient confidentiality.” And thank God for that. Being a doctor gave Sarah a good excuse to clam up when Elsie asked any questions about other residents.
“So are you saying you are going to be this Dante Sinclair’s doctor?” Elsie said shrewdly, shooting Sarah a calculating stare. “But you can’t tell me because of medical ethics?”
“No. I didn’t say that at all.” Elsie wasn’t trapping her into admitting anything. “I was just reminding you that no physician can gossip about any of their patients,” Sarah said firmly, knowing if she gave Elsie an inch, she was likely to take way more than a mile. The determined elderly woman would drag her across the whole country to get an answer.
“He’s very rich, you know. Single and a hero. He threw himself in front of his partner to try to save his life, and killed the shooter so no one else got hurt. He’d be a good one for you, honey,” Elsie told her thoughtfully. “Beatrice and I were just talking about you two this morning.”
Oh, God. Just the thought of Elsie talking to Beatrice Gardener about her destiny was a terrifying thought for Sarah. Beatrice was the second-biggest gossip in Amesport and considered herself the town matchmaker. Around the same age, the two women were absolutely lethal together. “I’m not looking for a man,” she told the older woman hurriedly, her voice almost desperate.
