She took a deep breath and couldn’t help that it was shaky. “I can’t say no to you. I love you all.”
Three sexy, satisfied grins greeted her words.
“How do we decide who gets to marry her first?” Jace asked.
“Wait for it…” Clay said, almost at the same time Quinn spoke.
“Arm wrestle.”
Jace and Clay both laughed. “He never loses,” Jace explained. “His father was a bricklayer, and Quinn worked summers with him. He’s strong as an ox.”
She’d noticed.
“I lose sometimes.” Quinn sounded almost wounded.
“Yeah. He’ll throw us a bone,” Jace said. “When it doesn’t matter.”
Quinn had his arms cross over his prodigious chest now, making a show of bulging his biceps out. He looked at her solemnly. “This would matter.”
Gemini couldn’t help it. She got up and went to Quinn. He opened his arms and took her into his lap. He held her, his lips pressed into her hair, and she knew, over her head, he was sharing a satisfied moment with his buddies.
“The legal shit doesn’t matter,” Clay said. “Chris’s partner is a minister,” he went on, reminding her of when he’d tried to tempt her with his gay friend. “We’ll get up a ceremony with him. For all of us. That will be what counts.”
She felt the rumble of Quinn’s agreement through his chest and saw Jace’s nod. She smiled, happy as she could be.
Jace stood up and put his hands out to her, taking her from Quinn. She went into his arms. They spent a long moment gazing into each other’s eyes and then he kissed her. It was a touching, sweet commitment.
When he was done, he cupped her cheek. “It’s Friday, baby. Would you like to spend the day here? Enjoy the city a little? Or would you rather head for home?”
“I want to go home.” She clasped Jace’s hands, then stepped back out of his arms. The guys weren’t the only ones who’d been making important decisions. She’d been doing some thinking, too. “But there’s something I have to do first.”
“I know,” Jace said. “You need some clothes. We’ll take you shopping.”
“No. Well, yes. But there’s something else. And I need to do it alone.”
“Not gonna happen.”
* * * *
Clay had stood and crossed his arms over his chest. Most perps backed off when he took that stance. Of course, Gem didn’t. She just looked up at him from where she stood, still holding Jace’s hands. Somehow, he felt the next few minutes were going to set the tone for the rest of his life, and he didn’t think he was going to be happy about the outcome.
“I won’t be in any danger. I’m not going near Bryce. But I have to do this.”
“Then you can do it with us.”
He saw her squeeze Jace’s hands and then let them go. She walked around the table to face Clay directly. It wasn’t going to work. “I’m not the only one here who doesn’t want you to walk out of this room without protection.”
“He’s right, baby,” Quinn said, and Jace murmured his agreement.
“You understand I’m done with having men control my life.”
“Yeah. And you understand that’s not what this is about. It’s offensive that you’d even suggest it.”
“That is what this is about.”
“No, it’s not, Gemini. You know what kind of men we are. We just claimed you. You just gave yourself to us. You can’t ask us to let you put yourself in danger. You can’t expect us to let you go out alone when Tomlinson and his goons are out there.”
“He doesn’t know where we are.”
“You don’t know that.”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then she turned her head. “Quinn.”
There was some history between the bricklayer and his wife, and it was physical. When Quinn was in high school, his mother decided she’d taken enough. She packed up the younger kids and went back to live with her parents. Clay knew the story, and maybe Gem did, too.
Or maybe she just figured Quinn for the softest touch.
The man put a brave face on it. He looked hard at Gemini, and held it for a good long time. But she gazed back at him like she knew what she was asking and asked it anyway. After a while he caved. He put his hands on his hips and dropped his head, staring a hole through the floor. “We have to let her go.”
“Shit.” Clay just kept from kicking the chair in front of him.
With obvious reluctance, Jace opened his wallet and emptied it of cash. He offered it to Gem, meeting her eyes and holding onto it a minute, their hands both clutching at the bills, before he let go. “Be careful.”
“Thank you. I will be.”
Quinn still wasn’t looking at her. She walked over to the entrance. She’d kicked her shoes off and dropped her pearls on the table there when they’d come in last night. Putting a hand out for balance, she wiggled her feet into the heels and then fastened the pearls around her neck.
She came back to Clay, close to his height now in those stupid-hot four-inch heels. He grimly handed her his cell phone and she accepted it. “I’m asking you not to follow me.”
“All right.”
“I know you could, without me knowing. I’m asking you not to.”
“I hear you.”
“But you still haven’t said you wouldn’t.”
Bitch. He crossed his arms over his chest. “I won’t follow you. I’ll just stay in this fucking hotel room and worry like a pussy.”
She had the nerve to grin, but then she kissed him pretty good. “That’s my man.”
She went back to Jace next, who was probably the only reasonable male in the room at the moment. “I’ll be back by late afternoon. We can spend the night here if you all want to, or leave right away. I want to go home.”
“All right. We’ll wait for you. Then we’ll get a few hours on the road tonight.”
She kissed him, too.
Then she went to Quinn, who was obviously still suffering. She circled his neck, pressed up against him, and snuggled into his shoulder until he finally lifted his arms to hold her. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“I know you will.”
“Thank you.”
“You know if anything happens to you, Clay is going to kill me.”
She touched his face. “I know.”
They kissed, and then three idiots watched her walk out the door.
As soon as the door was closed, Clay held out his hand to Jace. “Phone,” he said. He watched the others as he dialed. His favorite tech guy, a kid name Shawn, picked up after several rings. Clay identified himself and then put him on speaker.
“I worked the night shift, you know.”
“Sorry, buddy. I’m off the clock.”
“What do you need?”
“I need you to track my phone.”
“You don’t know where you are?”
He chuckled and met the eyes of his buddies without guilt as they all sat at the table. “I’m in Sacramento. Someone else has my phone, and I need to know where that someone goes.”
“You’re avoiding pronouns, and this has woman written all over it. Go ahead and say it.”
“It’s a woman.”
“She’s at the…” It hardly took him a minute. “Citizen Hotel.”
“Gift shop,” Jace said. “She needs a purse.”
Shawn was quiet for a minute. “Do you want to know her calls, too?”
“Yep.”
“Nothing since yesterday. Well, a call to the station and another to Sam, but I imagine that was you.”
They sat for two hours. Gemini shopped. She spent most of her time at Arden Fair Mall. She didn’t make any calls—at least, not on Clay’s phone. Just after noon, she headed back downtown. When she stopped moving, she was at the Channel 10 television building.
“Let’s roll,” Clay said. “She’s going public.�
��
Quinn stood, too. “You said you wouldn’t follow her.”
“I didn’t follow her. I’m just going where she is now.”
Shawn spoke into the tense atmosphere. “They’ve got a live local talk show at one o’clock. It’s hosted by a woman named Christine Brewer.”
“Thanks, Shawn. We’re probably done. I’ll call you back if I need anything more.”
“Good luck, dude.”
Clay looked at Quinn. “Maybe she can keep it quiet until they go on air. But within a few minutes of one o’clock, Tomlinson is going to know where she is and what she’s doing. You going to stay here?”
“No.”
They all moved fast and within a few minutes, they had their belongings collected and were back in the old Lexus. It was a little after one when Clay used his badge to get them to the studio.
* * * *
Gemini had first met Christine Brewer at a fundraiser for a women and children’s shelter. She actually got to know her when Christine took her camera crew to the shelter itself. The newswoman had interviewed Gemini on site—where both women volunteered.
It was a charitable effort that Bryce hadn’t cared for. He’d have preferred she take up the cause of something prettier, like the symphony or ballet.
At the mall, Gemini paid a teenager outside Hot Topic twenty dollars to make a few calls on his phone. She’d guessed that, when Clay had handed her his phone, he wasn’t thinking only of her convenience and safety. She was certain he could check the calls she made and wouldn’t doubt that he could track her movements. It was impossible to control everything, but she took the precautions she could.
From the kid’s phone, she contacted Christine. Suddenly, Channel 10’s afternoon talk show had a change of guests, and it was going to make some news.
With Jace’s cash, Gemini purchased a pair of dress slacks and a sleeveless silk top in the same spring green. She exchanged her heels for a pair of wedged sandals and bought a necklace and matching earrings of silver and Yellowstone River agate. She tucked her pearls into the clutch she’d picked up at the hotel gift shop and left the dress and heels in Nordstrom’s ladies’ room.
She dawdled at the mall for as long as she could. She climbed into a cab with just enough time left that she wouldn’t have to worry about making it to the studio on time.
* * * *
Quinn was as proud of her as he could be. They’d made a bit of a disturbance as Clay bulldozed their way into the small studio auditorium. Gemini and the newswoman had glanced up at their entrance but went right back to work. The audience—maybe a hundred or so women and a few pussy-whipped husbands—looked the three of them over a little longer.
On the small stage, Gemini sat facing Brewer. She looked beautiful—both strong and vulnerable, dignified and just a little fragile in elegant clothing of her own choosing. In response to a question, she was explaining why she’d chosen this program to make her public statement.
Apparently, when they’d worked together at a women’s shelter, Gemini had gotten the sense that Christine had her own personal history of abuse. The journalist didn’t deny it.
“I remember our conversation there,” Christine said. “We talked about the irony of building a shelter for women and children. Every place should be a shelter, you said. Every home, every church, every public building. Every village and town and city.”
“For everyone,” Gemini added.
“Everyone…because you believe that abusers were once children who needed shelter themselves.”
“I suspect that’s mostly true, don’t you?” Gemini asked.
“Are you saying you have sympathy for your abuser?”
“Well,” Gemini said, considering. “I guess that’s a goal. Forgiveness and understanding, compassion—I think those are qualities of human beings who are thoughtful and wise. Let’s just say I hope to get there sometime.”
“Why did you come here today?”
Gemini looked at her hands. Quinn was sure she was rubbing her ring finger, unconsciously trying to soothe away the mark left by the ring that had been smashed the evening before. “For two reasons, really. In part, I want women who are living in this circumstance to know that they are not alone.” She looked up intently, her gaze meeting those of women in the audience and then the camera. “You’re not alone,” she said. “And you’re not without hope. No matter what you’ve done, you don’t deserve what is happening to you.”
Then she looked back at Christine. “Also, I’ve learned this. Bryce hurt me, but he hurt other women more. There are women who might want to be with him in the future. I want them to know.”
“What does that mean, that he hurt them more?”
“It means…Bryce never hit me in the face. He never hurt me in such a way that it would show.”
“Because you’d be with him in public the next day. You’d be on his arm.”
Gemini nodded. “Yes.”
“Other women, you said. Are you claiming Bryce cheated on you?”
“That’s not a thing I would talk about either way. If he did or didn’t, if I did or didn’t, that’s no one’s business but ours.”
“But you’ve brought your marriage before the public today.”
“I’ve brought my circumstances of abuse. For the reasons I’ve stated.”
“We all know that Bryce has political aspirations. Was that part of your motivation as well? Your accusations could put an end to his political career.”
Gemini lifted a single shoulder. “That’s really for the voters to decide, not me.”
Christine paused for a moment, and Quinn saw her focus on a monitor at the edge of the stage. Then she looked back at Gemini. “Bryce Tomlinson is in the studio.” There was a big audience reaction to that, and a pretty big one from the man standing next to Quinn. Clay went up on his toes, only maybe held back by Jace’s arm coming up like a gate in front of him.
“He’s asking for a chance to defend himself. He’d like to join us on stage. How do you feel about that?”
Quinn thought it was clear how Christine felt about it. He could imagine that in her smart, pretty little head, she was ticking off the boost to her ratings.
Gemini appeared calm and still, but Quinn knew the signs of her tension. “This is your show. You can invite him onto it if you like. But I won’t stay.”
Christine was clearly torn. Quinn figured her for a decent woman trying to do a decent thing, but she was also a professional in a business that loved drama. “Is Bryce not entitled to a chance to defend himself?”
Gemini took a long breath. “Bryce can do what he wants. I have no desire or ability to control what he does. The fact is, I have no proof of what I’ve told you today.” With simple grace, Gem slid her fingers along the neckline of her top and then along her bare arms. “Since two weeks after my marriage to Bryce, I never wore sleeveless clothing or a low neckline. You know the significance of that, Christine.”
“You were covering bruises.”
Gem nodded. “Bryce is very charismatic. He will very compellingly deny what I’ve said today, so much so that you and others will be tempted to believe him. I can’t control that, either. I told you this morning when I called that I would speak of it only this one time. I will never talk about it again publicly. I will never face Bryce on a stage or anywhere else. I’ve told my story for the reasons I gave you, and now I’m done. You and everyone else will just have to choose what and whom to believe.”
The camera focused on Gem’s face, the dignity and determination there. Quinn wanted to cheer. Apparently, some ladies in the audience did, too. Someone hollered out, “I believe you, Gemini!” then others did, too. Within a minute, they were all on their feet applauding.
Christine stood, too, and put out her hand to bring Gemini to her feet. The newswoman couldn’t be heard, but everyone could see the words she mouthed. “I believe you.”
Still holding Gem’s hand, she looked off to the side of the set and gave a negative sh
ake of her head. Tomlinson wasn’t going to be ushered on stage.
The show was slotted into an hour. As far as Quinn could tell, they hadn’t taken a commercial break. When the crowd quieted, Christine kept an arm around Gemini and walked her down off the stage. For the next quarter hour, Gem spoke informally while women in the audience asked questions and shared their own experiences. Christine interrupted at one point to close the show, but the conversation continued long after that, and the cameras kept running. Before it wound down, Gemini’s blouse was damp with tears from the women she’d hugged. One of Christine’s staff members had quickly printed off a list of local resources and contacts for shelter, and some women took those with them when they left.
Quinn, Clay, and Jace stood beside the door to the auditorium, their backs against the wall and their arms crossed over their chests. Apparently, Bryce had been shown out of the building via another route, though Quinn was sure that was a disappointment to Clay.
Jace looked up from his phone. “These are just normal women,” he said. “It’s not a select audience. They came expecting to see Christine interview a local romance author who’s just made her way to the top of the New York Times best sellers list.”
Quinn figured that, of the three of them, Clay was the least surprised. He just quietly nodded. “Our girl did good.”
* * * *
They drove past Reno and half-way across Nevada before Quinn called them to a halt. Gemini was with him in the back seat of the Lexus, and she’d been lights out for a couple hours. She’d had a day.
Clay looked at the pair over his shoulder and left the highway at the next exit. He chose the best of the hotels clustered there, and they took a couple rooms.
Each of the men carried their own small bags. As they’d emptied the trunk, Clay had grabbed the Nordstrom’s shopping bag that Gem had brought from the studio. When they got to the first room, Clay opened the door and found the king-sized bed. The other room was supposed to have two queens. He took Gem by the arm and ushered her in. “She’s with me tonight,” he said to Quinn and Jace, not so subtly blocking the door.
They didn’t object too strongly. They all knew he was the one who’d broken trust with her that day and, though the guys didn’t feel bad about it, she might.
Gemini Page 20
