“You want to know about the Michaels men and why I reacted when I heard their name? Fine.” She paused to take a breath and prepare herself to speak about something she hadn’t spoken about for over a decade.
“I reacted to the name because our father sold me to them—lost me in a game of poker, actually. Yes, you heard that right. It wasn’t just people from foreign countries and illegal weapons he traded in,” she continued. In front of her, Caleb had gone sheet white and she was dimly aware that Garret had moved a step closer to her. She held out a hand to stave him off and finished.
“He sold me off, Caleb. Or rather, my virginity. Henry Michaels senior thought it would be fun to win that for his son. And then again, a second time for himself once I was broken in,” she added. “I was seventeen when I found out. Too late to take it back from junior, but at least I caught on before the father had his chance. I thought I was in love. I thought Henry was in love. He played it well. Then again, it’s probably not hard for a twenty-two-year-old man to play a seventeen-year-old girl.”
“How,” Caleb’s voice broke. “How did you find out?”
“What he did to me or about everything else?” she bit out, not interested in, or probably not even capable of, taking any pity on her brother, though clearly he’d had no idea.
“Both,” he managed to say.
“Men talk,” she waved a hand absently in the air. “You know how our father was—have the guys over, drink some whiskey, play some pool. I happened to come home early from the lake one day and overheard him talking to Henry Michaels senior over another game of poker. It seems the only thing our sweet father was concerned with when he gambled me off the second time was that I not be physically bruised in the process. You know, because the social season was starting and he didn’t want to see any marks on me in my dresses.”
Caleb went from white to an interesting shade of green. And still, she continued.
“And as for the rest? As for his activities trafficking women and children and illegal arms? Well, he always was a bit of a technophobe, so he kept those stupid journals all the time. After I realized what he’d done to me, I wasn’t about to lie down and take it. I’d done that already, hadn’t I? So I broke into his office, photocopied the information, and contacted Dani.
“I knew she was working at the CIA by then, and she and Drew took it from there. I know for a fact that they ruined several of his enterprises. I had the pleasure of watching his life fall apart for a few months even though he tried to keep it from me.” She paused again and suddenly, all the fight went out of her. She took a deep breath and let it out.
“So there it is, Caleb. Yes, I know both of the Michaels men but no, I haven’t seen them since I moved out of the house after our father died. Nor do I ever wish to do so.” She paused, then shook her head. “I changed my mind. I don’t want to know why you want to know about them. All I know is that I don’t want to talk about it anymore. You know what you came here to find out, so now you can go.”
Never in her life had she seen Caleb at a loss, but he seemed to be now. She knew he had a right to feel bowled over, but her concern was fleeting.
She turned toward her room, toward her sanctuary, needing to get away.
“I didn’t know,” Caleb said, his voice hoarse. “About you, Kit. I mean, I knew about the rest, that’s why,” he paused and took a deep breath. “I knew about the rest and that’s why I left. I left to see what I could do to stop him,” he explained.
Kit turned back to see a myriad of emotions raging on her brother’s face.
“Please, Kit, believe me,” he said, taking a step toward her, though he was blocked by the kitchen island. “If I had known, I never would have left. Or I would have taken you with me.”
“You were twenty when you left, Caleb. How could you have not known what he was like? Especially now that I know you knew about everything else, how could you not have known what he was capable of?” It was the question that had haunted her since the moment she’d found out just the kind of man her father was. How could her brother have left her when he had known?
“I mean, look,” she said, feeling sick and dirty just talking about it. “Look at what he named us for Christ’s sake! Caleb: a fearless leader, faithful and bold. And me, Kitten. Who in their right mind names their daughter Kitten?” Kit felt like she was going to be sick. She turned and pushed past Garret, who was smart enough to let her go.
Her foot was on the third step when Caleb spoke again.
“I swear to god, Kit, if I’d have known, I would have taken you and killed him.”
She turned and studied him. He met her gaze and she had no doubt he was telling the truth. It was a small salve to her soul. But just a small one.
She offered him a sad smile. So much had already been said, but there was one more secret to tell. One more dark part of her to share with her brother.
“But you didn’t have to, Caleb, because I did.”
CHAPTER 9
IT WASN’T SO MUCH what Kit had said but how she said it that froze Garret’s blood. Her words were tinged with sadness, but what really echoed in his head was how matter of fact she’d sounded. Dimly, he recognized that he’d been standing in the same place for a long time, frozen in the onslaught of information.
And then all that information, everything she’d shared, slowly filtered into his mind and formed a story. Only it wasn’t fiction. And at the thought of Kit being used, yet again, fury ripped through him.
“What the hell, Forrester?” he said, turning on his partner.
Caleb was sheet white and backing away from him. The island stood between them, but Caleb was smart enough to know that if Garret wanted to go for him, the granite centerpiece wouldn’t stand in the way.
“I didn’t, I...” His voice trailed off and he held up his hands in a defensive gesture. “I swear to god, I didn’t know. Any of it,” Caleb clarified.
Garret felt the tension in his own body coiling through his arms and squeezing his chest. But he forced himself to look at Caleb, take a deep breath, and try to figure out what the hell had just happened. And though he wasn’t inclined to admit it, the way Caleb looked—pale and maybe even a little bit scared, slowed the pounding anger into a steady thud.
“You knew something,” Garret pointed out. Caleb shot him a wild look, then spun away from him, though he didn’t move to leave the room. Finally, after a long moment, Caleb ran his hands over his face, laced his fingers behind his neck and let his head fall back.
“I think I’m gonna be sick, Cantona,” he said.
Garret studied the line of his friend’s back. “No,” he said after a moment. “No, you’re not. You’ll figure this shit out and when you’ve made things right with Kit, if you can make them right, then you can get sick. But right now, your sister is more important than anything you’re feeling.”
And Garret believed that too. He was even pretty sure Caleb believed it, but he had to admit that the magnitude of what had been said in this room was probably beyond anything Caleb had ever experienced. The guilt alone might do him in.
“Why did you ask her about Henry Michaels?” Garret asked.
It was so long before Caleb finally turned around that Garret had been just about ready to repeat himself.
“Michaels?” Caleb repeated as he shook his head, possibly trying to shake it all off. “Remember? I recognized him on the tarmac of that deal we watched just before we came here.”
“And?”
“And the other guy, one of the other guys,” Caleb clarified, “was someone who had cropped up when I went off to investigate what my dad was into. So when I saw the two of them together, I just,” again, his voice trailed off.
“You just wondered how someone who was involved with your dad all those years ago and one of his old friends ended up on a South American tarmac with illegal weapons some fifteen years later,” Garret supplied.
Caleb gave a sharp nod.
“Any chance that guy, not Mic
haels but the other guy, showed up a few months before your dad died?”
Again, Caleb nodded.
“So he was probably the spook Dani and Drew sent in once Kit handed over her father’s, your father’s, papers.”
Caleb gripped the back of a stool. “Probably,” he conceded, not sounding at all happy about it. Not because he was unhappy that the intelligence communities already seemed on top of whatever it was Michaels was into, but more likely because, had he known they were already involved, he never would have confronted Kit. Never would he have forced her to relive that part of her life.
But even in the few short minutes that had passed, Garret was beginning to think that maybe it hadn’t been such a bad thing to get everything out in the open. Obviously he wished the events themselves hadn’t happened—he felt like he could take something, or someone, apart if he let his mind actually begin to contemplate everything Kit had gone through. But they had. And nothing was going to change that. What might change was Caleb and Kit’s relationship and maybe, just maybe, her relationship with Garret. It was hard to hide behind a wall after shining the light on everything.
“But what about now?” Caleb asked, the question sounding more habitual than out of any real curiosity.
Garret gave this a moment of thought, but it didn’t take too long for him to land on a decent theory. “My guess is that Drew keeps an eye on things your father was involved with. He and Kit seem close, and we know now that they’ve known each other since she was seventeen. I bet Drew got wind of Henry Michaels trying to enter the game and sent in the same guy they used the first time to figure out what was going on. Based on his friendship with Kit, I wouldn’t be surprised if Drew does this as a matter of course. She might not even know, probably doesn’t even know,” he amended, “that Drew does that sort of thing.”
Caleb seemed to contemplate his statement, but as he did so, Garret began to feel edgy. He’d let Kit walk away because it had felt as though they all needed some time to process what had just been said. And in Caleb’s case, what it all meant.
And though Garret hadn’t necessarily sorted through everything yet, he had done enough that Kit, who was never far from his thoughts, was moving back into them, front and center. And he needed to be with her. More than he had needed anything else in his entire life.
Without a second thought, he moved toward the stairs leading to her room.
“Where the hell are you going?” Caleb barked.
Garret didn’t bother to turn around or even answer. What would he say, anyway? So he kept walking until he reached her door. Leaning against it, he heard the sound of her shower running. After stopping off quickly in his own room, where he kicked off his shoes and removed his sweater, he returned to Kit’s door and quietly entered room.
The shower was still running, but the bathroom door was open so he approached and leaned against the doorframe, waiting. After a few moments, Kit turned the water off and stepped into view at the entry to her walk-in shower.
As she reached for her towel, she caught sight of him. Her hand froze. She stood like that for a moment, then grabbed the towel. He wanted so much to go to her, to wrap his arms around her and tell her everything would be okay. But even from where he stood, he could feel her pushing him away, so he remained at the door.
“I always feel so dirty when I talk or think about that time in my life,” she said, running the towel over her wet hair. She didn’t bother to try to hide the rest of her body and so, with the exception of parts occasionally hidden by the towel, Garret was gifted with the sight of her.
“None of it is your fault,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean you’re not entitled to feel how you feel.”
Her eyes caught his for a moment, then bounced away. He could feel her defensiveness relaxing just a bit when he didn’t push, but still, he didn’t trust himself to go to her now—she might not resist as much as she would have just a few seconds ago, but with the strength of what he was feeling for her at this moment, he feared he would overwhelm her.
“That’s what Baresi meant, wasn’t it?” Garret asked instead of reaching for her. “You went to him after you left your father’s house. After he died,” he clarified.
Kit stepped out of the shower and wrapping the towel around herself, walked toward him. Stopping a few feet away, she looked at him and spoke.
“I met Marco in a bar in Rome one night. After the funeral, as soon as I had access, I’d taken some of the trust money my mother had left me. A few months later, I found myself in Italy. We talked, we became friends, and then yes, we became more.” She took another step toward him; he could smell the musky scent of her shampoo and feel the heat from her water-warmed body.
“He was good to you?” he managed to ask.
“Yes,” her answer was instant. “He was,” she added softly. He watched her as her mind seemed to travel back to that time. When she spoke again, her voice was filled with the weight of her memories—only this time they weren’t all bad. “He taught me about trust and respect and, yes, even love,” she said. “But I think the most important thing he taught me was that sex, and maybe even love, didn’t have to be tainted. It didn’t have to be soiled by greed or pride or arrogance. He taught me to give as freely as I chose to give and to take what I needed from a partner. He taught me that being physical with someone didn’t have to be a war that someone won and someone lost, but that it could be a dance, something shared. He taught me all of that when I most needed to learn it,” she added, her voice soft. “And in learning that, I also learned so many other things about myself—what I wanted and who I was. He said he healed me once before and he wasn’t lying, Garret. I was broken when we met, and he helped me put the pieces back together into something that was better than what I had started with.”
Garret reached up and brushed a lock of wet hair from her face; it was all he would allow himself. “For that, I am in his debt,” he said.
For a moment, she just looked at him, then she stepped forward, closing the space between them. She placed one of her hands on his chest and slipped the other behind his neck, pulling him forward until he dipped his head and his lips met hers.
All sorts of logic and reason screamed in his head, telling him that this wasn’t the time or the place. But it all took a back seat as her body leaned into him and she brought her other hand up, linking her fingers at the back of his neck. Instinctively, his arms wrapped around her waist.
“Kit,” he said, pulling away. He was unsure of where she wanted things to go. If she needed him to stop, he would. It would cost him dearly, but he would. “Tell me what you need,” he added before dropping his forehead to hers and looking her in the eye. He could feel the blood racing through his system and, try as he might, he couldn’t get it to quiet.
Her golden eyes stared up at him and for a moment, she said nothing. Then she spoke. “I need you to heal me, Garret. Remind me that everything that happened all those years ago wasn’t what it was supposed to be like. Remind me of how good something can be. Take me away from that place and that time, Garret. Help me make it better.”
“Kit,” he said on a breath. Did she even know what she was asking? He would give everything he could, but would it be enough?
“I know,” she said, touching his lips with a single finger. “I know it’s a lot, Garret. But I know, from the bottom of my soul, that you can do this with me. I need you to do this with me, Garret.”
And though it wasn’t how he had imagined things would go between them, it wasn’t the wine and roses and white tablecloth service he’d always imagined when he thought of being with Kit, he took one last look in her eyes and knew, beyond a doubt, that she wasn’t the only one who needed this.
***
Garret lay beside Kit, gently stroking her hair, her cheek on his chest. Everything they’d done in the last few hours was more than the sum of the individual acts. That much he knew. But he also hoped, lying there, feeling her body against his, that the honesty they had
shown each other—that they had demanded of each other—was enough. Not enough to make her forget, he doubted Kit would ever forget what her father had done, but enough to help her remember, remember how good and true it could be between two people.
“Do you think my brother will be surprised?” she asked, referring to the fact that there was now no way they would be able to hide anything from Caleb. Garret let out a slow laugh.
“I think he’s probably already planning exactly how he will kick my ass,” he answered. Her head popped up.
She frowned. “Caleb long ago stopped looking out for me,” she said. When he said nothing in return, she gave him a little poke. “What?”
Garret lifted a shoulder against the cool sheets. “I just think that maybe there was more going on than you know about.”
She watched him for a long moment, then abruptly rolled away. “Undoubtedly,” she said. “There’s always more going on with him than I know about, which is part of the problem.”
“Kit,” he said, sitting up as she rose from the bed and walked to the bathroom. “I’m not defending him for leaving you there. God, no. I wanted to kill him myself not two hours ago. But your brother isn’t as complex as you think he is.”
She stopped by the bathroom door and, as if she suddenly felt very exposed, grabbed a towel and wrapped it around her. Turning to face him, she leaned against the doorframe and arched a single brow. “In my experience, most men aren’t.”
He sat up more fully now and shot her a look. “Resorting to clichés is so beneath you, Kit.” He raised a hand to stop her next retort. “Caleb didn’t talk about you or your dad often, but when he did, it was usually a comment about how happy you were at home and how close you were with your dad, and how your dad doted on you. Like I said, Caleb never said much, but when he did, it was obvious he cared about you.”
“So much so that he left me with a man who was a criminal,” Kit shot back. He heard and even understood the bitterness in her voice, but still believed there was more to it. “I wasn’t there, Kit, so take what I’m saying for what it’s worth. But I do know your brother cares about you. A lot. I do know he thought you were happy at home.”
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