by Sybil Bartel
“Halt,” I barked.
Harm, Candle and Ronan all drew on Massimo again.
There was no way a Vincenzo was simply walking away. “Where’s Cara?”
“I thought I’d find her up here with you.” Showing his hand, he shook his head with a sheepish grin. “You can’t win them all. However, I think I may know where she is.” He glanced down the mountain, then looked pointedly back at me. “It will be in her best interest if I find her before my brother does.”
Clearly Massimo wanted to fuck with his brother and Cara was the pawn. I didn’t give a shit. Cara had dug her own grave and the entire Vincenzo family could fuck off. All I cared about was Antonio’s bullshit where Summer was concerned. “Tell your brother if he comes after me or Amherst’s daughter again, I’ll kill him myself.”
Massimo nodded gravely. “I will pass the message along.”
“Same goes for you.” It wasn’t a threat, it was a promise.
“For the record, I did not sanction this. My only mistake was not recognizing the misplaced loyalty of the two guards I sent up to see if my brother’s wife was here.” Massimo glanced to the right then left where the bodies lay in the snow, then his expression and his voice hardened. “I will not make that mistake again.”
“Great,” Candle interjected. “We done here?”
“We are.” Massimo glanced at each of us. “Gentlemen.” He smiled at Summer. “Miss Amherst, a pleasure, but I hope next time we meet it’s under better circumstances.”
“There won’t be a next time,” I warned.
Massimo laughed. “Well, one can hope.” He turned to leave.
Harm stepped in front of him. “Take your men off the mountain.”
Massimo held his hands up. “Seeing as I’m quite unprepared for body disposal, I believe I’m going to leave that responsibility to Mr. Domani.” Massimo glanced over his shoulder at me. “Consider it payment in kind for eliminating your problem with my brother.”
Harm eyed me.
I tipped my chin.
Harm stepped out of Massimo’s way and the fucker, casual as hell, shoved his hands in his leather jacket and trudged down my road.
Candle spoke up when Massimo was out of earshot. “Any of you using traceable weapons?”
“No,” I answered as Ronan shook his head.
Candle glanced at Harm. “You?”
Harm rested his shotgun over his shoulder. “You’re not a Marine. Green Beret?”
Candle snorted. “Ranger. Any of your lead in any of those amateur fucks?”
“I don’t leave tracks,” Harm answered vaguely.
“Great,” Candle said sarcastically before glancing at me. “I’ll make sure that asshole and whoever he’s with gets off your mountain. Consider us even.”
I nodded, and Candle took off after Massimo just as the generator sputtered and died, killing all the lights both in the cabin and on the exterior.
Oblivious to the world of suck we’d just been thrown into with no power, Summer glanced at my neck. “You need to stop the bleeding.”
Ronan looked at me and Harm looked toward the generator.
My cabin shot to shit, dead bodies staining my property, no fucking power—it all accumulated. But the rage I’d been holding back at her for coming after me for a third fucking time is what sent me over the edge. “You left the control room,” I accused, biting out each word in a lethal warning.
Her face red from the cold, her hands hidden in the too-long sleeves of the parka, she still twisted them. “They were closing in on you.”
“YOU LEFT.”
Recoiling, she reached for her parka. “I-I didn’t know if you needed more guns.” She unzipped one pocket then the other. “Or bullets.” Pulling out one of my Berettas, then two magazines for the Glock, she held the gun and mismatched ammo up and her voice went quiet as fuck. “They were shooting at you.”
Harm walked off.
Glaring at her, I spoke to Ronan. “You got chains on?”
“Yes,” Ronan answered.
“Bring the Escalade up,” I ordered. “You’re taking her home.”
MY STOMACH BOTTOMED OUT AND Ronan took off.
“I’m not going home,” I protested as stupid, traitorous tears welled.
“Yes, you are.” Shade pushed past me and aimed for the side of the cabin.
Shoving the gun and bullets back in my jacket pockets, I scrambled in knee deep snow that had drifted up against the house. Like an idiot, I followed Shade to the generator as he yanked a little door open.
“Please,” I begged, as his blood continued to darken his jacket by the collar. “Let me stay. I want to stay here with you. You can come inside and I can help you with your neck.” I got it, he was pissed at me, but I didn’t care. I wanted to be with him, and he needed to take care of the bleeding. He had that first aid kit in the safe room. I was sure there was stuff in there I could use.
A few yards away, the guy they called Harm stood over one of the two dead bodies lying in the snow and shoved it with his boot.
“It’s a graze wound,” Shade bit out.
“We need to stop the bleeding,” I protested.
Whipping around to glare at me, Shade’s face contorted with fury. “We?” he asked incredulously. “There is no we. You were supposed to stay in the control room, while I handled shit.”
Intimidated, hurt, angry, worried, I stuttered. “I-I can put some Band-Aids on it.”
“Band-Aids?” he practically roared, as snow fell all around us. “I don’t need any goddamn bitch stickers, and I sure as fuck don’t need an insubordinate teenager coming to my fucking rescue!”
I flinched.
Harm picked up the dead body and put it over his shoulder.
Then I got angry. Really fucking angry. “Now I’m a teenager?” What an ass. “How convenient—I was a woman when you were fucking me.” In a spectacular display of self-righteous anger, I managed to turn on my heel without face planting in the snow.
But I didn’t even make it a foot.
Shade’s huge gloved hand wrapped around my neck, and he spun me back around. “Do not make this about anything other than the fact that you can’t fucking follow directions to save your life.”
I smacked his hand away. “Really? Because calling me an insubordinate teenager was keeping it solely about me following directions? And you’re welcome for bringing you more bullets, you ungrateful jerk.”
“They weren’t even the right goddamn magazines for that gun,” he yelled as a black Escalade, identical to the one in the garage, pulled up in front of the cabin.
“Well sorry I’m not G.I. Jane or fucking Cara the Psycho, or whoever the hell else you wish I was! I was just trying to help.” Fuck him and his stupid bullets.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he roared. “I didn’t say shit about you being someone else!”
“No, you just called me a teenager, AGAIN.” Which hurt more than any other part of this stupid argument. Just thinking about it made my next words sound weak and pathetic instead of accusatory. “And you never even acknowledged me saying I wanted to stay with you.”
Shade growled in frustration as Ronan approached.
“Perfect!” I threw my hands up. “Your manservant is here so you can foist me off on him.” Just like my father always palmed me off on my stepmother and André Luna.
“Fucking Christ, woman. I’m not foisting shit. The cabin’s shot to shit and there’s no goddamn power!”
Angry as hell, hurt, and totally out of my element because I’d never actually cared what a guy thought of me, I couldn’t stop the destructive words from coming out of my mouth. “Oh, but if your stupid generator was working and your bedroom window wasn’t full of holes, you’d be super glad to keep me. You’d let me stay then, is that it?” I belligerently challenged.
“Watch it,” he warned, glaring at me.
“Whatever.” He didn’t say he wanted me to stay, and that was all the proof I needed. But I hate
d this. I hated him being pissed off at me. I hated this whole fucking situation and I hated the stupid, stupid audience we had more than the dead bodies lying around, and that was a blinding reality check I couldn’t ignore. “You want me out of here? Fine, I’m out of here. Fix your own stupid bleeding neck.” I didn’t wait for whatever derogatory comment he was going to throw at me, or worse, his silence. I trudged to the Escalade.
Ronan had left the vehicle running, and I got in, but the second I was in the warmth of the heated SUV, I wanted to break down in tears. Ronan didn’t immediately come back and by the time I watched him retrieve my suitcases from the Escalade in Shade’s garage, I wanted to run back to Shade and throw myself at his mercy because I regretted everything.
And I couldn’t stop myself from repeatedly glancing over to where a surly six-and-a-half-foot bodyguard was crouched by a generator. But not once did he look up. Not even when Ronan got behind the wheel and silently handed me my purse and the cell phone I’d given to Shade a lifetime ago.
“Ready?” Ronan quietly asked after putting on his seatbelt.
Looking away from where Shade was still working on the generator, I angled toward the window and lied. “Yeah.”
Turning the SUV around, Ronan slowly started us down the steepest part of Shade’s driveway and I couldn’t stop myself.
I glanced one last time at Shade.
As if he knew the moment I looked for him, his head came up and his gaze locked on to mine.
My breath caught, my heart stopped and I didn’t think. My hand went to the window, palm flat.
Warrior still, winter falling all around him, Shade didn’t so much as blink.
With the Escalade’s chained tires maintaining traction even though the snow was deeper than when we’d come up here, Ronan drove us down the mountain road.
I didn’t grip the handle above the door.
I didn’t hold my breath as another bodyguard who didn’t smell like gun powder and musk maneuvered the switchbacks.
I didn’t notice that the man in the driver seat didn’t banter or smile or say a single word.
I didn’t even care if we went over the edge and plummeted to our deaths.
My heart was up on a mountain, and I was sinking faster than our altitude.
I didn’t realize I was silently crying until Ronan turned off of Shade’s mountain road and spoke.
“When the perfect comes, the partial will come to an end.” His tone even, his voice quiet but full of a type of depth I couldn’t explain, Ronan’s words broke the silence like that first bullet into Shade’s bedroom shattered the glass.
I swiped at my face. “What is that, a quote?”
“The Bible. Corinthians,” he answered in the same quiet manner that was completely opposite of Shade.
“You’re religious?” I’d never been to a church in my life.
“No.” No intonation in his voice, I couldn’t read anything behind his words like I could with Shade.
“But you know enough to quote it.” I didn’t know why I was pushing the point or even engaging with him. My heart was crushed. I couldn’t stop the panicked notion that was choking all reason, telling me I’d made the worst mistake of my life. And I wanted to be in Shade’s arms so bad I was fighting the urge to tell Ronan to turn around with every breath.
“It’s appropriate,” Ronan added vaguely.
Falling apart and exhausted, I was foolish enough to ask. “Appropriate for what?”
Turning to look at me with his piercing eyes, Ronan spared me a glance. “You.”
Suddenly uncomfortable in his presence, I faced the window. “I don’t know what that means.” I didn’t want to know.
Quietly, and without emotion, Ronan the substitute bodyguard told me anyway. “If he is right for you, nothing else will matter.”
WHAT FELT LIKE A LIFETIME later, Ronan drove into the underground parking of my building and pulled into the space next to my Maserati.
Putting the Escalade in park, he glanced at me before he got out, but he didn’t say anything. In fact, he hadn’t spoken for hours. Which suited me fine because I had nothing to say.
Before I even pushed my door open, my long-sleeved thermal, leggings and boots were stifling, but as I got out the SUV, they became almost unbearable.
Fighting the overwhelming feeling that I was suffocating, I made the mistake of inhaling deeply. Exhaust, trash, brine and humidity filled my lungs and I wanted to weep, but I somehow kept it together as I joined Ronan at the back of the vehicle.
Shorter and leaner than Shade, but still ridiculously ripped, Ronan reached for one of my suitcases and I reached for the other, but his cool hand landed on top of mine.
“I’ve got it, Summer.”
Not princess, not woman, not sweetheart, not even Miss Amherst. Just Summer, said in a tone without emotion.
Nothing to say, I simply nodded.
Ronan pulled my suitcases out and closed the back hatch of the Escalade, and I led us to the elevator. Waiting patiently while I fished out a keycard I hadn’t used in more months than I could remember, Ronan stood stoically by my side.
A couple minutes later we’d been whisked up to the penthouse and I didn’t know if I was relieved to be home or terrified as I opened my front door.
Bright sunlight and designer everything hit us as I stepped across the threshold.
Ronan pushed my suitcases in. Then he stopped and stared at me like he wanted to say something.
I stared back because even in the bright light of day, I couldn’t figure out what color his piercing eyes were. All I knew, they weren’t a shade of brown that made my heart race.
After a long moment, his throat moved with a swallow and he spoke. “Do you mind being alone?”
The question, his unfettered stare, it threw me. He didn’t ask if I was okay, or if I needed anything, or if I wanted him to stay. Ronan asked if I minded being alone and I honestly wasn’t sure how he meant it. Alone right now? Alone in general? Alone as in single? Alone without Shade?
I realized it didn’t matter how he’d intended it. The answer was all the same, but I lied anyway. “No.”
He nodded. “Do you need my number?”
Instant and without warning, tears welled because for once, in that single sentence, I could read the mysterious Ronan. He was offering his number in case I needed him. Not as a bodyguard, but just him.
I wasn’t so full of pride that I didn’t fish my cell out of my bag and hand it to him.
He powered it up and programmed his number, then offered it back.
Humbled, I took my phone. “Thank you.”
“Think nothing of it.”
I thought everything of it. But I didn’t say that. “Thank you for driving me home.”
“You’re welcome. Be at peace, Summer.” He searched my face one more time, then turned toward the door. A moment later he was gone, leaving as quietly as if he’d never been there.
Exhausted, I should’ve gone straight to bed, but I knew I would never sleep.
Instead, I toed off my boots, pushed open the heavy slider to my balcony and stepped into the merciless sunshine. Walking to the steel topped glass railing, I stared at the ocean as a salt scented breeze brushed my hair off my shoulders.
Too many stories up to count, endless views of crystal-clear aqua water, swaying palms, and white sands—it should’ve been beautiful.
But standing here after going to rehab, and then falling for a man too old for me, too wrong for me, and too hardened to even give me so much as a nod goodbye, all I could think about was that my ocean view wasn’t a mountain view.
And I didn’t come by this place because I’d earned it. I’d demanded my father buy me the penthouse so I could look down on everyone on that beach and do drugs wherever the hell I’d wanted. He’d only acquiesced because I’d become too much for my stepmother to handle and a Miami Beach penthouse cost him less than an argument with his wife.
I glanced down at the phone still in
my hand.
No calls.
Not that I expected a certain bodyguard to call and check on me. Or anyone for that matter. As far as I knew, no one but Ronan knew I was home.
Sighing, I contemplated tossing my cell off the balcony, but instead I walked back into the penthouse and dropped my phone onto the glass coffee table before sinking into the soft leather sofa.
Shade’s cabin didn’t have a glass coffee table or a white leather sectional. It didn’t have a modern décor designed by an expensive interior design firm who made everything look expertly ‘beach chic’ in a palette of whites, grays, tans and pale blues. Shade didn’t even have throw pillows on his sofa.
He had a panic room, perimeter security, and his hall closet had a shotgun.
My closet had Louboutins.
And I hated it.
All of it.
Including the two suitcases sitting in the front entryway mocking me. Restless, I stood to go unpack them, but a knock sounded at the front door.
My heart jumped even though I knew there was no danger. I was in a secure building and the keycard access had been changed while I was in rehab. Only my father, Fallon and André Luna had access.
Not wanting to see any of them, I padded barefoot to the entry and steeled myself before opened the door.
My stepmother, Fallon, stood flawlessly poised with a guarded expression, but when she saw my hair, she blinked. “Hello, Summer.”
Her sultry voice was a perfect blend of cultured upbringing and understated seduction. I’d envied it my whole life. As a famous supermodel, she was stunning, even more so now that she was in her late thirties, but I’d always wondered if my father had fallen for her voice over her beauty.
“Hi.” I stepped back so she could come in.
In high-heeled, jeweled Jimmy Choo sandals and a silk, cream colored dress, she gracefully walked past me. As classy and polished as she’d always been, her subtle perfume trailed after her like a talisman of her impeccable blend of beauty and wealth.