For Always (A Donovan Friends Novel)

by AC Arthur

  “Are you sure?” he asked when she was naked and he was too. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “I’m fine,” she told him and smiled. “Really. This time, I’m fine.”

  She was fine, from the tip of her pert little nose to the toenails that had a color change and were now pumpkin orange. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen and Tyler was sure that he’d fallen madly in love with her.

  But he didn’t think Gabriella was ready to hear that. So, after slipping on a condom, he eased into her slowly. He wrapped her legs around his waist and for the first time in his life made sweet love to a woman.

  * * *

  An hour later Gabriella was still in the bedroom. Tyler had already gone downstairs to get started with his day, but he’d advised her to take it easy. After he’d given her the best and strongest orgasm she’d ever had.

  She’d showered and slipped into a simple floral print sundress and flat sandals. She’d just finished talking to Adriana on the phone, telling her sister everything she should have told her before, when there was a light knock on the bedroom door.

  “Hi,” she said when she opened the door to see Monica standing there.

  “Good morning,” Monica replied and stepped into the room. “Are you feeling better?”

  “I am,” Gabriella answered. And since Monica was already in the room, she closed the door. “How are you this morning?”

  “I’m well. It’s a little different waking up on an actual ranch, than in a Manhattan apartment,” Monica said.

  Monica Lakefield was one of three Lakefield sisters. Their father, Paul Lakefield had founded the Lakefield Galleries in New York. Two years ago, Monica spearheaded the expansion of her father’s dream to share great art with the world by opening the Atlanta Lakefield Gallery. She was a lovely woman with a light complexion and ebony hair, which this morning was styled in a messy bun that still managed to look chic and professional. She wore a dress as well—a vibrant pink halter maxi dress and natural-colored sandals with heels that only added to her normal five foot nine stature. She was the oldest of her sisters, Karena and Deena. The more dominant and fiercely protective one. And, for the last five years she’d been engaged to Alex.

  That made her family.

  “I want to thank you and Alex for coming all the way down here to check on me, even though it wasn’t necessary,” Gabriella said when Monica seemed to be preoccupied.

  Rather, she was doing what Monica always did first, assessing her surroundings. Monica was a thinker who said whatever was on her mind, when it came to her mind. That could be a good and/or bad thing. Gabriella had seen both.

  When Monica finally stopped looking around the room, she took a seat in the recliner across from the bed.

  “Come sit, and talk to me for a second,” she said and nodded toward the bed.

  Gabriella had been planning to head downstairs and get a cup of coffee before she started making calls to her crew to see about rescheduling the work that wasn’t done yesterday. But, she could sit and talk…for a second.

  She sat on the side of the bed closest to the recliner and waited because Monica clearly had something she wanted to say.

  “First of all, don’t thank family for doing what family does best—loving and caring for their own,” she began. “When Renny called Alex to tell him what Cole reported about your car, we immediately drove down to Greenwich. Cole wanted to question you, to see how you were connected to Austin Sterner, but you weren’t there. That drove Alex nuts not knowing where you were. When he told your parents what had happened they said you were out of town on business, somewhere in Texas. He had to call Adriana to find out the specifics. We were worried.”

  Gabriella sighed heavily. “I can understand that. But it’s not like I didn’t tell anybody where I was going. I just didn’t tell everybody.”

  “I get that,” Monica said with a slow smile. “Believe me, girl, I get it. You’ve found your niche and you’re working it. I respect that wholeheartedly, and to tell the truth, I knew you would get there in your own time.”

  “Thanks for saying that,” Gabriella said. It really had meant a lot to hear that somebody in her family had believed in her all along.

  “Alex is still a little sore at you about leaving and not telling him, but the relief of knowing you’re safe outweighs that.”

  “I can’t believe what Austin did.”

  “I can,” Monica told her.

  “What? Why?” Gabriella had told Tyler all that had happened between her and Austin last night. And just a few minutes ago she’d relayed the same story to Adriana, who was angry and hurt that Gabriella had gone through all of that on her own. But she hadn’t yet figured out how to tell Alex, her parents or her other brothers. None of them would take it as relatively calmly as Adriana had.

  “Because I know his type.” Monica sat back in the recliner, looking as if she were about to tell Gabriella a bed time story. There was no way Gabriella could have expected what would come next.

  “I don’t…I mean, I never told anyone in the family about Austin.”

  Monica nodded. “That’s the first sign.”

  “I don’t get what you’re trying to say, Monica.”

  She tilted her head and stared at Gabriella a moment and then clasped her hands together in her lap. This was the most serene Gabriella had ever seen Monica look.

  “His name was Yates Hinton. I found out much later that wasn’t his real name, but that’s what I knew him as. I met him when I was in college. He swept me off my feet and I fell deliriously in love with him. And then his wife found out,” Monica spoke quietly.

  Gabriella didn’t know what to say.

  “I broke it off with him. He grew angry and he raped me. I blamed myself, graduated from college, went home and decided to never look back. I didn’t tell anyone and I did nothing to stop Yates from doing it again to someone else. Or, as it turns out, for coming after me again. Years later, he stalked me, harassed me and finally, forced me to stab him. And only after all that did I tell my story, before walking away from your brother.”

  “Monica,” Gabriella said with tears brimming in her eyes. “I had no idea something like that had happened to you.”

  She nodded. “Just like no one in your family realized anything traumatic had happened to you. But I did, Gabriella. I saw it in your eyes the moment you opened them after we pulled you out of your car. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t have all the facts. And I wasn’t sure if this ranch had something to do with it too. But then we arrived here and I met Tyler. I saw how he looked at you and how you looked and him and my past played before me like a movie.”

  Monica let out a little chuckle. “My mother always said that our lessons learned should be told in order to guide someone else who might be fighting that same battle. You are where I was five years ago and Tyler is Alex, trying to love a woman who’s been broken by another man. Austin is your Yates.”

  “You don’t know the whole story,” Gabriella began, but Monica stopped her.

  “And I don’t need to know it. Not unless you want to tell me. But Gabriella, while your details may be different from mine, the pain and despair that you’ve suffered is the same. I know it. I see it in your eyes right now. I feel it in my heart as I did so long ago.”

  Damn she was tired of crying. Lifting her hands to wipe her face, Gabriella shook her head.

  “I couldn’t tell,” she said. “It hurt so badly and I felt so stupid, I just couldn’t tell.”

  Monica came to the end of the chair. She reached out to take Gabriella’s hands.

  “That pain will pass, once you stand up to him. Don’t believe that it will go away, that you can outrun it. You can’t. He’s sick in his mind and no rational thought will stop him, but the police tossing his ass in a cell will. Don’t let him take any more of your life, Gabriella.”

  Gabriella, nodded. She knew that what Monica was saying was right. She knew she had to face Austin. She had to stop him
once and for all.

  “I won’t,” she said. “I know what I have to do.”

  Monica stood and pulled Gabriella up for a hug. “I’ll stand with you if you want me to. I’ll be there every step of the way.”

  “Thank you.” Gabriella held her tight. “Thank you so much for these words and for being here today and for putting up with Alex.”

  To that, Monica laughed and when they broke free of the hug shook her head.

  “It was a close call for us,” she told Gabriella. “I walked away from him because I didn’t know if I could rebuild myself after admitting everything about Yates. But I came to my senses and it all worked out. These have been the best five years of my life.”

  “He loves you so much,” Gabriella said. “We all see it in everything he does. And when you finally marry him, it’ll be such a big celebration. We’ll have fireworks and a parade or something grand.” She joked.

  “Everybody’s path in life is different,” Monica said. “There are some patches that are similar, some roads that lead you around in circles, and some that drop you right into a dead end. But eventually, I believe, everybody gets to where they are supposed to be.”

  Gabriella took those words with her as they moved downstairs to smell the scent of breakfast cooking.

  * * *

  Tyler looked around the table in the dining room and for a moment felt like he was taken back twenty-five years, to a time when his parents were alive and well and entertained friends. They would often have dinner parties or outdoor barbeques. Their closest friends would come and sometimes people that they did business with, but there would be lots of guests and laughter and a sense of home and belonging.

  He didn’t know when that had stopped for him, but sitting here this morning, he knew he definitely wanted to get that feeling back on a more permanent basis. Picking up his glass to finish the last of the orange juice Dessie had insisted he drink—regardless of how much sugar he told her it contained—Tyler listened as Alex finished telling a story and Gabriella laughed.

  It was a rich, full-bodied sound, which had that feeling of constriction in his chest rising again. Tyler didn’t bother to question the sensation this time—because he knew what it was. And when she reached out to take his hand that was sitting in his lap, he looked over to her and smiled. Aside from that bandage on her forehead that pissed him off each time he looked at it, she was as beautiful as ever, sitting beside him with her hair out and around her shoulders. This was exactly where he wanted to be and who he wanted to be with.

  “Don’t listen to him,” Gabriella said as she continued to grin at him. “I wasn’t that bad.”

  “She was worse,” Alex added. “Everything my parents told her not to do, she did. And she did it so badly that they had no choice but to find out. Like the time she was sixteen and snuck out of the house to go to some party with her friends. When she tried to sneak back into the house at almost five the next morning, she managed to get into her room safely but then one of her friends called to make sure she was home and my mother answered the phone. Gabriella didn’t know Mom was on the other line and she proceeded to talk to her friend about all the fun they’d had and how excited they’d been when the college boys showed up at the party.”

  “College boys?” Dessie asked with a raised brow. “Chile, I know your mother was ready to whip your behind good for that stunt. I know I would have.”

  Clyde shook his head. “And I would’ve had my gun out looking for each of those college boys that decided to attend a party with high school girls.”

  “I’m surprised your brothers didn’t go out looking for them,” Jagger added. “Ty, you remember that time our cousin Carlee, came to visit from Daytona. She had every ranch hand and supplier in the area chasing after her. Until we got the word out that she wasn’t to be touched, or looked at for that matter.”

  Tyler nodded and smiled. He had forgotten about that summer when he and Jagger had been teenagers and much closer than they were now.

  “Carlee hated us for that,” Tyler said. “I don’t think she came back to the ranch for a visit since that time.”

  “Oh believe me, Adriana and I have our share of moments when we can’t stand our brothers for their overprotective nonsense,” Gabriella said.

  “Boys raised to be good men shouldn’t be hated,” Clyde said. “They should protect the women in their family at all costs.”

  Alex nodded and locked gazes with Tyler. “That’s exactly what my dad taught us,” he said.

  Tyler held Alex’s gaze and confirmed, “My father taught us the same thing.”

  The knock—or rather pounding—on the front door, halted the conversation. Everybody paused, but nobody moved. The pounding sounded again.

  “It’s just the door, y’all,” Dessie said and pushed away from the table.

  Clyde dropped his napkin on the table and got up with his wife. “Everybody sit tight.”

  Tyler squeezed Gabriella’s hand which had gone still.

  “You think any about who would want to kill that woman and leave her body on your property?” Alex asked Tyler.

  Tyler had thought about it. Between that and killing Austin Sterner, he’d thought of nothing else last night. Which is why the minute he’d come downstairs this morning, he’d gone into his office to call the private investigator he’d hired.

  “I’m working on a theory,” he said.

  “You plan on sharing that theory?” Jagger asked. “Because we’re all involved now. Regardless of whose name is on the deed of this place, I’m a West and I always will be. Whatever’s happening involves the both of us.”

  “It involves all of us,” Gabriella said. “We’re all here now and the killer is still out there. So it involves all of us.”

  Monica nodded. “I agree with her. And sometimes when more than one head is put together, solutions and answers come quicker. So, please, do share your thoughts.”

  Alex didn’t look too pleased about what his fiancé said, but he didn’t argue. Instead he sat back in his chair and again, looked expectantly at Tyler.

  “Sheriff Alvarez wants to have an informal word with Tyler and Gabriella,” Clyde said coming into the dining room.

  “Should we leave?” Monica asked.

  “No,” Tyler replied. “If this is informal, we’re comfortable with everybody staying. Right?” he asked Gabriella.

  “Yes,” she replied. “That’s right.”

  Sheriff Alvarez had come into the room and now stood at the head of the table. He didn’t look happy about the arrangement, but Tyler wasn’t concerned about the sheriff’s happiness.

  “There was an argument between you and Hannah Palmer the night before last,” he said to Tyler. “Tell me about it.”

  Tyler did not hesitate. “I made reservations for dinner at P&P for seven-thirty. Gabriella and I were seated. We ordered and were having a glass of wine while we waited for our food when Hannah approached us. She talked to me about us meeting up for an article in the Gazette. I turned that offer down. She then turned her attention to Gabriella and began to spew hateful racist rhetoric at her.”

  “Hmph.”

  All eyes went to Dessie who had made the sound and folded her arms angrily over her chest.

  “Gabriella responded to Hannah’s taunt and we left,” Tyler finished.

  The sheriff nodded.

  “You responded with a threat to Ms. Palmer’s life,” Alvarez said to Gabriella.

  It was a statement and not a question which told Tyler that Alvarez had spent the rest of yesterday talking to people who had been at the restaurant. Which meant, he’d been thinking of circling back to him and Gabriella all along. Tyler tried not to be angry at that fact, accepting that it made sense in the course of an investigation, considering all the facts. But damn if he had to like it.

  Gabriella slid her hand away from Tyler’s and sat up straighter in her chair.

  “Yes, I did,” she replied. “She was nasty and disrespectful. I was angry
and when she tried to assault Tyler, I let her have it. With words, that is.”

  “What did you say to her exactly?” the sheriff asked her.

  “You don’t have to answer that,” Clyde told Gabriella.

  She shook her head. “I’ll answer it. I told her that if she ever talked to me like that again I was going to bust her head with the next bottle of wine.”

  “And you assaulted her?” Alvarez pressed.

  Clyde shook his head. “Do not answer that, Gabriella.”

  Tyler touched her shoulder and she looked over to him. She did not respond to the sheriff.

  Alvarez frowned. “Where were you Wednesday night between the hours of midnight and three in the morning?”

  “She was with me,” Tyler interjected. “We were in bed together.”

  He ignored Alex’s frown and prayed that Gabriella would not contradict his statement.

  “Is that true?” Alvarez asked her.

  “Yes,” she said without hesitation. “Tyler and I were together in bed on Wednesday night.”

  Alvarez nodded. He also looked skeptical.

  “Who else was here in the house Wednesday night?” the sheriff asked and looked around the room.

  “I was,” Jagger told him.

  Alvarez gave a half smile. “Jagger West. Your fiancé is still sitting in my jail cell waiting for her lawyer to get there. Tell me what you’ve been doing here in Hobbs Creek, since she’s been busy vandalizing private property?”

  Jagger didn’t flinch. But Tyler hadn’t suspected he would.

  “I had dinner alone on Wednesday night. Frozen pizza and beer. I watched some really bad reality TV shows and crashed on my bed I guess somewhere around nine. I didn’t see Tyler or Gabriella but I did hear them come in,” Jagger said.

  That could have been true, Tyler thought, because after leaving the restaurant, even though Gabriella had been silent, Tyler had known she needed to eat. So he’d stopped at a fast food place to get them something quick, that neither of them ended up eating.