by Lori Ryan
“Do you have sisters and brothers?” he asked out of the blue.
Her gut reaction was to clam up. Not only that, but to make an excuse to get up and leave. It would be easy enough to say she should go help get the group moving toward the van to load up or something.
The silence stretched.
“Don’t you want to know if I have any?” he asked after a beat.
She looked up. She did. But she shouldn’t.
There was something in his mood today. She didn’t know what but it was like he had decided something. And apparently it was something that meant he was going to press her.
“I’m an only child, too,” he said.
“Oh,” was all she said. How lame was that? She felt cornered.
“How about your mom and dad?” he asked. “Mine died. They were much older than my friends’ parents when they had me. I was their miracle baby so they were in their sixties when I was in my last year of high school. My dad died from cancer soon after I graduated and my mom went a while later from a stroke.”
He was reciting the history like it was nothing more than a set of facts and she thought maybe he was doing it in challenge, as if to dare her to tell him her story.
She gave him a short answer, nothing more than the bare essentials he was giving her. “My dad is gone, too. But my mom is alive.”
“Do you see her often?”
She shook her head. “I don’t get to see her much.”
“Don’t or can’t?” There was that challenge, this time flat out in his words, but also in his face.
She didn’t answer. She was frozen to her seat, neither fleeing, nor answering.
He leaned across the seat and this time, he took her hand, rubbing across the skin with his thumb. “Would it hurt to tell me?”
She wanted to. God, how she wanted to tell him everything. If only just to not have to carry this burden herself anymore. But what good would it do?
And the harm it could do if things went wrong was too great. Her mother’s life was at stake. Of that she had no doubt. Turner wouldn’t stop at anything short of death this time. Not after her mother had left him. He would kill her mom if he ever found her and it was Joy’s job to keep him away from her. To lead him around the country.
She shook her head, ignoring the censuring look in Kaeden’s eyes. He could judge her all he wanted. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t get close to him. Couldn’t trust that he might be able to do something to help her and her mom. They had tried that route before and it had left her mother in a hospital bed. She wouldn’t be that foolish again.
Chapter 22
It was Samantha who approached Kaeden next. He was leaning against a tree, somewhat outside the circle of people around the fire that night. He had just seen Joy walk up to the main house and was thinking of following to see if she needed any help.
She’d been avoiding him since their talk that morning.
“How are we going to help Jane?” Samantha asked, breaking into his concentration and making him jump at the use of Joy’s real name.
He looked around and then turned to Samantha. “Didn’t take you long to figure that out.”
She shrugged. “I heard that conversation about Commfarm and I already knew she was hiding something. It really didn’t take much skill to find out there was an employee who’d been reported missing.”
Kaeden grunted. He had searched for Jane Walker after getting the message from his friend and had read the articles about her disappearance also. The thing was, it wasn’t only Jane who was missing. Her mother was too. They had both disappeared over two years ago, leaving her stepfather distraught and searching for any sign of them.
What confused him was that she’d told him she couldn’t see her mother. So that meant the two women must have split up and that had him wondering what all of that meant.
“The police report and the officer’s notes didn’t have anything really useful, except to detail the mother’s injuries from a car accident. It was horrible.”
Now Kaeden turned fully to her now. “You’ve read the police report?”
Even in the dim light of the fire, he could see her “duh” eye roll.
“Yeah, so here’s the thing. The mom was in a car accident and Joy went out to help her afterward. The police report says stepdaddy was driving the car and another car went over the line in the road at night as they were coming around a turn. Mom’s side of the car plowed into a tree and she wasn’t wearing a seat belt.”
Kaeden couldn’t help it. He winced at the description. He didn’t want to know what kind of damage the woman had sustained. It was probably a miracle she wasn’t dead.
Samantha didn’t stop there. “So, I’m not a cop, but there wasn’t a whole lot in the report. Her mom was seriously injured and will suffer for the rest of her life because of this but there’s not a whole lot of investigation happening. They have a really general description of a blue sedan. The stepdad said he swerved before the car hit them so there was no transferred paint or anything like that, but there’s also no mention of tire marks on the road or anything.”
“So the other driver was never found?”
Samantha shook her head. “Nope. No other witnesses. Nothing.”
Kaeden frowned. God, he wished he could get Joy to open up to him about this.
Samantha put her hand on his shoulder. “You should make sure she knows we’re here for her if she wants our help.”
Kaeden nodded, but he wasn’t sure he bought it. Sure, Samantha probably meant the words on some level, but really, why would they help Joy? They didn’t know her the way he did.
And he’d seen what people meant when they gave false platitudes and offers to stick by your side. When push came to shove, that shit just didn’t stick.
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t ready to help Joy. He knew once his decision was made, he would stand by it. He’d be with her now through whatever was coming her way. And Samantha was right. He needed to let her know that.
“So, you know by now that I’m completely inappropriate and I have no boundaries, right?”
Kaeden didn’t love where this was headed. He kept his eyes on the fire, not on Samantha.
She plowed on. “Okay, good, right, so that’s covered. But here’s the thing. You’ve been part of us for awhile now, but you haven’t actually let yourself be part of us, you know?”
Nope. Definitely didn’t love it.
“Logan tried that too, when he came back from serving overseas. Thought he could keep his distance. It didn’t work for him.” She turned to Kaeden. “Though I have to give you props, you’ve really held out longer than he did. I mean, two years with us, Kaeden, and until this trip, you were really going strong.”
He looked her way. Until this trip? What the hell did she mean?
She grinned, leaning toward him. “You’re cracking. Not only with us but with Joy.”
Kaeden wanted to tell her that was bullshit. No, he actually wanted to walk away without saying anything.
He didn’t. He respected Samantha. He wouldn’t treat her that way.
When he didn’t respond, she didn’t seem to be bothered.
“So, here’s where we get to the really inappropriate part,” she said.
“Samantha,” he growled in warning. He might respect her but he really didn’t like where this was going.
“I know about your involvement in Alyssa Moore’s case.”
Kaeden felt all the air go out of him. He didn’t ask how Samantha knew. She could access anything she wanted to, pretty much. Her work for the FBI proved that.
“What do you think you know?” he asked instead, grinding the words out.
“I know you tried to help her. And I know you witnessed the attack, I can only guess how that would have affected you. The man was your platoon leader.”
Kaeden didn’t respond. Darryl Kelley had been more than that. He’d been a mentor, someone Kaeden looked up to in the Corps. In life. The day Kaeden walked i
n to see him assaulting one of the women under his command had destroyed so much. Everything. His faith in people. His belief in the Corps. In the brotherhood, the family he’d found among the men and women he served with.
“You stopped it,” Samantha said gently.
He had. He’d stopped the worst of it anyway. He’d escorted Alyssa to safety, kept her covered until he got her back to her quarters so no one would know her shirt had been torn off her and her pants had been undone.
He’d stayed with her there, standing outside the shower room as she scrubbed herself clean. He’d known she was washing away any evidence but there had been no stopping her.
What followed next had nearly destroyed his career as thoroughly as it had destroyed his confidence in the system and in the people he’d respected and served alongside.
“I did.” It was all he could say.
“I get why you won’t want to let anyone get close to you again,” Samantha said, this time reaching out and touching his arm.
He pulled back and crossed his arms. He didn’t have to be a shrink to know it was a classic back off signal. He was being an ass and he didn’t care.
If Samantha was fazed by his move, she didn’t show it. “Logan did the same thing when we started to get close. It scared the hell out of him and he thought he was protecting me by pushing me away.”
“It was stupid.”
Kaeden turned to see Logan standing behind them. The other man carefully moved around him to stand next to his wife and Kaeden had a feeling he was being careful to make sure Kaeden didn’t feel trapped.
Logan ran a nonprofit that helped veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Injury and Traumatic Brain Injury. Though they had several counselors, Kaeden would guess that Logan had seen and heard a lot of the methods they used there to help people in crisis.
Well, that wasn’t him. He wasn’t in crisis. He didn’t have PTSI or TBI. He was fine.
Logan wrapped his arms around Samantha from behind, pulling her tight against him and Kaeden was struck with the near debilitating desire to wrap himself around Joy like that.
“When you’re ready to move on from what happened,” Logan said, “we’re all here for you. Or you can come over to my office and meet with Ernie. He’s our head counselor and he knows what he’s doing. He’s a veteran himself so he isn’t going to blow smoke up your ass.”
Samantha elbowed Logan. “Language, baby. We’re not back in the military.”
Logan grinned at her.
Kaeden wanted to run. Needed to run.
As if the couple saw that, they both turned back to the fire.
“When you’re ready,” Logan said as they walked closer to the fire, leaving him standing alone again.
Chapter 23
Turner watched his stepdaughter make her way down the hall. Two days of showing her picture to front desk clerk after front desk clerk and he’d finally found her in one of the lodges on the bus route.
When he walked into this lodge, he hadn’t even had to ask for her. He’d seen her in an ill-fitting housekeeping uniform, pushing a cart down one of the hallways that led off the main lobby.
He looked around the building, knowing there would be cameras in a place like this. It wasn’t a very big lodge, but it was the type of place that would take the security of its guests seriously. He couldn’t take a chance being caught on camera talking to her. Not with what he had planned for her when he got her alone.
That was okay. Now that he knew where she was, he could wait to get her alone. Then he’d grab her and they would have a nice private talk about what happened to people who tried to take what was his.
Chapter 24
Evan didn’t like the fact that the auburn-haired woman smiling at him was a warm and welcoming person. She was beautiful in an understated way. She didn’t wear makeup and her hair was streaked with silver, but her brown eyes danced and her smile was genuine.
She was thin and had a frail look that he had a feeling came from the car accident.
When he’d approached the woman he was sure was Turner Carson’s wife, she had turned and smiled without any hesitation. She’d also bought his story that he was touring the facility for his mother.
“I like the art classes the best,” she was saying as she gestured at the easel in front of her. She was sitting in a wheelchair, but he knew she had some mobility. He’d read it in her file, but she’d also moved her feet several times since he’d started their conversation.
Debra Carson had introduced herself as Emma Lawson, though.
“They have pottery and sewing,” she said, “and a lot of exercise classes for old farts like us, but the painting and sketching classes are my favorite.”
“It’s really beautiful here,” he said, looking at the garden they were sitting in. “Are you from the area?”
He knew her brother lived two hours away and that her family had lived two hours in the other direction when she was growing up so the area was familiar to her.
He saw the flash of a shadow in her gaze and she shook her head. Her first lie.
Still, she looked almost pained by it as she floundered to move the conversation to something else.
“She’ll love the food, too. The breakfasts are usually just cold cereal and fruit or maybe oatmeal, but lunches and dinners are quite a thing here. Everyone comes out of their rooms if they can, and there are desserts with every meal.” She patted her middle. “I’ve put on some weight since I got here.”
“Have you been here long?”
She dabbed her brush to the flowers on the canvas she’d been working on when he approached her. “Oh, quite a while. I like it here. Your mother will, too. You should bring her for a visit.”
Evan shifted to his feet. He could see one of the staff working their way over to them and he wanted to be away before the man could approach and question what he was doing on the property.
“I’ll do that. I think I might be able to convince her to move to a place like this. Thank you for talking with me.”
She gave a distracted nod as he walked away and he hoped he hadn’t pressed hard enough that she’d become suspicious. He didn’t know if she’d run if she did. With her medical needs, it wouldn’t be easy for her to pick up and leave without notice.
Still, he would sit on the place until he got in touch with his client. After all he’d gone through to find her, he wanted to make sure he was able to collect the fee Turner Carson was willing to pay for the safe return of his wife.
Chapter 25
Joy came to his cabin this time and Kaeden had to admit it shocked him to see her standing on his doorstep. Not disappointed at all, but surprised.
He hadn’t expected it after the way she’d closed up when he had pressed her for details about her life.
He wanted to continue to press. Wanted to find some way to reassure her that he wouldn’t harm her, that he’d only help if he could.
Fuck that, he’d find a way to help. If only she’d trust him.
So, yeah, he wanted to push, but he didn’t. He wanted to feel her in his arms again and that just made him a selfish dick.
He never claimed to be more. And maybe after he made love to her for half the night, he could find a way to get her to trust him enough to open up.
So when she showed up on his doorstep, he didn’t hesitate. He thanked God he’d chosen to stay in one of the small cabins on the property instead of in a room in the main lodge, and pulled her inside.
He didn’t stop with that. He pulled her to him, joining their bodies and their mouths, taking her in a kiss that he hoped would tell her all he wasn’t willing to say.
He didn’t know if this was what she had planned when she came to his door, but she didn’t argue or push him away. She reached up and twined her arms around his neck and kissed him back, making his body tighten and stand at fucking attention for direction from her.
He ran his hands down her back and reached to cup her backside, pulling her closer. But it was no good.
There were too many layers of clothes between them and his body was screaming out its protest.
He began to tug at her shirt, pulling it up and only breaking his kiss for the small second it took to pull the fabric up and over her head. He made quick work of removing her bra and then he sank to his knees, letting his hands skim over her soft curves as his mouth found her nipple. He teased and tasted with his tongue, loving the responding whimpers and moans that came from her.
She was so damned responsive and every time she moaned, his dick grew harder until it was painful. It felt like it was going to break through his zipper.
He shifted back and undid his pants before reaching up to pull his own shirt off. He was going to have to stand to get his pants off, but he wasn’t ready to do that yet.
He reached for her, pulling her to him again and bringing their chests together, skin to skin, as he closed over her mouth again. Their tongues tangled and he knew the minute he entered her, he’d lose all control, his mind turning over to the overwhelming sensation of being inside this woman.
He didn’t want that too soon.
Instead, he stood and led her back to his bed and nudged her down on it. “Lay back,” he said and then began to work her pants and panties off. She started to cover herself but he stopped her, pulling her arms out to the sides as he let his gaze travel the length of her body.
She was incredible splayed out on the bed for him.
“Christ, Joy, you’re beautiful. So damned beautiful.”
He lowered his mouth and this time, rather than going for her breast, he trailed his lips over the soft skin at one wrist and then up the inside of her arm. She squirmed and gasped and he kept moving. Her shoulder. Her collar bone. Neck. Then down between her breasts to her stomach.
Lower still. When he found her center at the apex of her legs, she was warm and hot and wet. He closed his mouth over her and hummed low and soft. She let out a long slow moan and he grinned. He loved bringing this woman pleasure.
