Protected by a Hero

by Susan Stoker, Cristin Harber, Cora Seton, Lynn Raye Harris, Kaylea Cross, Katie Reus, Tessa Layne

  Brian found himself wanting to protect her. He knew what he needed to say: your boyfriend’s probably running drugs. Get rid of him! But somehow he couldn’t say it.

  He’d only been out of the Navy for a few days and already he’d gone soft.

  “What about TV? Surely you watch TV?” There were crime shows all over the place. Didn’t she watch them and put two and two together about her boyfriend?

  Alice laughed. “Almost none. We don’t get reception out here, and cable is expensive.”

  “What about the cheap movie channels?”

  She shook her head. “We’re all pretty busy. I guess we’ve never really been TV people.”

  Brian rubbed his chin and tried another tack. “If Howie delivers so many packages, how come he doesn’t deliver yours?”

  “Oh, he’s not that kind of deliveryman,” she said airily. “He does direct delivery. I ship things all over the world. He’s just running between Chance Creek, Billings and Bozeman.”

  “That’s a lot of deliveries for such a small area,” he commented.

  For the first time, Alice frowned. “I know.” She studied her hands folded in her lap. Brian waited. If she offered even a hint of understanding, he’d fill in the rest of the picture for her. “Cass thinks he’s cheating on me,” she blurted when he’d almost given up hope.

  Brian wanted to bash his head on the steering wheel. “Honey, he’s not cheating on you.”

  “You really don’t think so?” She looked so grateful, the words Brian had been about to say died on his lips. Damn it, he’d never had a problem ordering his men around, or talking straight to a subordinate who needed a dressing down.

  But this was no warrior to be chewed out.

  This was a fragile, lovely woman. Cass’s sister. And Alice’s expression was so hopeful it unmanned him.

  “What’s in the packages Howie’s delivering?” he managed to ask.

  “I don’t know. He doesn’t, either. They’re ready to go when he picks them up.”

  “You’ve seen them?”

  Alice shifted, and Brian clutched the steering wheel even tighter. Had that asshole really taken his girlfriend along when he delivered drugs?

  “I’ve ridden with him once or twice on a delivery run, but he said his clients didn’t like it, so I stopped,” Alice said.

  Town was coming up, Brian decided this conversation was too important to have while negotiating its busier streets and looking for parking. He pulled off the road and shut off the engine. “What do you think is in the packages, Alice?” he asked gently.

  She looked down at her hands clasped in her lap instead of answering. As the seconds ticked away, she shrugged.

  “I think you know,” Brian said.

  “He’s a good guy,” Alice said, but her attempt to defend him was half-hearted.

  “Then why is he using your car to deliver drugs? That’s what he’s doing, right?”

  “Of course not!”

  “You realize what’s going to happen if he’s stopped, don’t you?” Brian pressed on. “First, you’ll be implicated in the operation. Second, you could lose your car. Is that what you want?”

  She was kneading her left hand with her right, but when she noticed him looking, she stopped. Finally, she shook her head. “No. But it won’t happen, because Howie wouldn’t do that.”

  “You positive about that?”

  Alice bit her lip, and Brian realized she didn’t like to lie.

  “Alice, are you positive about that?” he asked again.

  “No.”

  Now they were getting somewhere, but it wasn’t easy making Cass’s sister so miserable. “Why don’t you say something to him? Tell him to leave your car alone, at the very least.”

  “He’d get mad.” Her voice was so low he could barely hear her.

  Brian nearly asked, so what? But he could tell that wouldn’t be a welcome question. “Will he hurt you?”

  She straightened, shocked. “Of course not.”

  “Then what are you afraid of?”

  “He’ll leave me,” she said, as if that explained everything. Maybe it did, Brian thought as he passed a hand over his face. As cocky and independent as the Reed girls were, at the core was a vulnerability so raw it made him wince. Their mother had left them. So had their father, in a way. It explained a lot. Plus, they were young. Cass was twenty-six. Alice couldn’t be more than twenty-four. Old enough to know better. Young enough to still hope for the best.

  Brian reached out and flipped the visor down on the passenger side. He positioned the mirror so Alice could see into it.

  “Know what I see when I look at you?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Someone so beautiful and talented she’s on her way to having the world at her doorstep. Is Howie your first serious boyfriend?” Another stab in the dark.

  “Yes.”

  “I guarantee if you walk away from him, another man is going to come along who knocks your socks off. You’ll know him when he makes your life better, not worse.”

  “How would I meet someone like that? It’s like you said, I never go anywhere.”

  Brian hated to see the pain in her eyes. “But you could. You know that, right?”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  No. He was beginning to see nothing was simple with the Reed women. “If you don’t want to leave home, then the trick is to keep doing all the things you like doing, and try one or two new things, too. If you act like yourself all the time, you’ll attract the right man. It’s when you pretend you’re someone you’re not—like by condoning drug use when you don’t agree with it—that you run into trouble.” He figured it was time to end the lecture for the day. He started the truck’s engine again.

  “Howie took my car,” Alice blurted. “Without asking. I didn’t want to say anything in front of Cass.”

  Brian understood why. “Let’s take care of your boxes and get you home. I’ll sort it out later.”

  He felt good about the exchange as they took care of their errands in town. Alice was more talkative than she’d previously been with him, telling him about her business and the way she created unique costumes for musicals, plays and even movies. He hoped that she’d taken their conversation to heart and that soon Howie, who sounded like a real troublemaker to Brian, would be a thing of the past. They decided to stop for coffee at Linda’s Diner before heading back to the ranch.

  Alice stopped him just as they reached the entryway. “Trouble.”

  Old habits had him scanning the street and rooftops. But then he did that anyway, no matter where he was. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Of course you don’t.” Alice was impatient. “It’s a feeling.” She held a hand up and Brian waited. “No, it’s gone.” She turned on him. “If you talk in the middle of it, I lose it.”

  “I think you’ve already lost it.” He meant it as a joke, but Alice’s face fell, and he cursed his flippant tone, realizing he’d just undone all the good work he’d managed earlier. After a moment, she nodded.

  “Most people don’t believe in hunches.” She opened the door and in the time it took for them to be seated, Brian lost his chance to say any more about the topic. He shouldn’t have said what he had, but he felt the Reed women’s superstitions were part and parcel of what left them naïve and vulnerable to exploitation. He wasn’t surprised Alice thought she felt things, raised on a ranch where everyone believed in a mystical stone. He didn’t let himself think about the way he was using that same stone to manipulate Cass into marrying him. That was for a good cause, after all.

  They settled in a booth near the front window. The coffee, when it came, was good and plain, the way he liked it. Alice sipped an herbal tea, but didn’t say much and he knew he’d hurt her feelings. “Look, I didn’t mean—” he began, but Alice leaned sideways and craned her neck to see out the window.

  “There’s Sadie! I can’t see who she’s with, though.”

  Brian turned the b
est he could and just made her out, standing across the street. Whoever she was talking to was out of his line of vision, blocked by a parked truck. As they watched, she turned and walked away.

  The waitress appeared again. “Here you go. Two slices of peach pie. Is there anything else I can get you?”

  “No, thanks,” Alice told her, accepting the dish from the waitress. Brian took his and eyed it appreciatively.

  Alice looked out the window again. “She’s gone, and there’s Mark. I wonder why I sensed trouble—” she broke off. “Probably the usual thing. He flirts with every woman he sees. He’s going to break her heart.”

  Brian filed that information away for later. “Alice, I’m sorry I made fun of you.” He needed to make the apology if he wanted her to trust him. He’d feel awful if she stayed with Howie because he’d undercut her again.

  “You don’t hear it, do you?” she said, cutting into her pie. “It’s okay if you don’t; I’ve only met one other person who does.”

  “Hear what?”

  “It’s not hearing, exactly.” Alice made a face. “It’s hard to explain. It’s like if you had to tell someone who’d always been blind what seeing was like. It’s information. It’s so clear. I’ve wondered and wondered why I can access it but hardly anyone else can, but I finally decided that’s not the real question.”

  “What’s the real question?”

  “What do I do with it?”

  Uncomfortable, Brian asked, “Who’s the other person who can hear it?”

  Alice smiled. “Rose Johnson. She’s married to the sheriff, and she owns Thayer’s Jewelers. Everyone buys their engagement rings there. She can tell if your marriage will last, but she doesn’t hear much else.”

  “It’s good pie, huh?” Brian said. He was well out of his depth in this conversation, but at least Alice didn’t seem hurt anymore.

  She smiled, a little sadly. “Yeah, it’s good pie.”

  “Did Alice get her packages off?” Cass asked Brian when they met up by his truck later. She’d been sweeping the back porch when he and Alice pulled in. As soon as they parked, Alice hopped out and high-tailed it into the carriage house. Cass, wondering if something was wrong, leaned her broom against the railing and went to investigate.

  “Yes. She’s a little… unusual… isn’t she?” Brian began to unload bags of groceries. “Hope you don’t mind. I added some things to the list because I thought we were low.”

  Cass took the bag he offered her, watched him heft three more into his arms, and followed him to the house, bemused. She couldn’t remember a man ever thinking about the state of their groceries. “Alice is… Alice,” she said.

  “She had some kind of premonition while we were out. That something bad would happen between Sadie and her boyfriend.” He sounded skeptical.

  “Well, that’s pretty predictable,” Cass said. “But Alice’s premonitions have a good track record.”

  “As good as the standing stone’s?”

  “Just about.” She followed him inside and began to unpack the groceries.

  “Name one thing she’s gotten right.” He pulled out a loaf of bread and put it away in the pantry. “Did she predict the stock market crash of 2008? The last presidential election?”

  “She predicted my mother’s death.”

  Brian stopped short. “Are you serious?”

  Cass nodded. “We were out riding, the five of us. It was a school day and that was our gym class.” She finger quoted the words. “We were homeschooled, you know.”

  “The General told me that.”

  “Alice reined up in the middle of the trail and began to cry. We didn’t know what had happened. I thought she got stung by a wasp. But she just kept saying, ‘Mom’s hurt. She’s really hurt!’ She was completely hysterical, so I stayed with her while Lena and the others rode like hell to get home. Lena got there first, of course. She found my mother at the base of the stairs where she’d fallen.”

  “Cass—”

  “Mom had a stroke. A massive one. There’d been no warning. She was thirty-seven, Brian. She lasted a few more days. At least we got to say good-bye, but still…”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Cass nodded and swallowed past the lump in her throat. Sometimes when she went riding on a crisp, clear fall day she went right back to that time, sitting on her horse next to Alice’s, cradling her sister in her arms as best she could.

  “I don’t know how Alice knows these things. Neither does she. Sometimes she hates it, because people don’t believe her, and sometimes the things she knows… well, they’re not pleasant. But she always says them out loud. Always. Even the bad things. Just in case someday she can stop them from happening.”

  Brian leaned his forehead against the doorjamb. “Hell. I’m an ass. Someday I guess I’ll learn to keep my mouth shut.” He straightened. “I lost my mom young, too, you know.”

  Cass hadn’t known that. “Was she sick?”

  “No. Walked into a robbery at a convenience store. Wrong place at the wrong time.”

  She read the pain in his features, and suddenly that lump filled Cass’s throat again.

  “I’m sorry, too.”

  “Yeah, well…” He shrugged. “We’re a little alike, you know. I’m not a big fan of my dad, either. Mom wouldn’t have been there if he hadn’t been too busy gambling all their money away. He’d already lost our ranch; you’d think he might have been a little more careful about his wife.” He turned away, but not before she saw his anguish. “Gotta go bring in the rest of the bags,” Brian said and left the house again.

  They were alike, Cass realized. Except his story was worse. She supposed she preferred a distant, workaholic father to a neglectful gambling addict.

  Her thoughts churned over what she knew about Brian. The way he’d lost his mother. The way he kept trying to do things for her. She busied herself putting away the groceries, uncomfortable with the feelings welling up inside her. She didn’t know why she was so emotional these days. It was silly. Nothing had changed.

  Except Brian was here.

  And he was changing everything.

  “It’s good to talk about it,” he said, coming in behind her. “I didn’t think that would be the case.”

  “We used to talk about Mom a lot,” she told him. “But not so much anymore.”

  “Do you find it hard to remember her? What she sounded like? Things like that?” He leaned against the counter and watched her empty the bags.

  “When I start feeling like that I pull out the letter she left me and read it again.” She must have done it a thousand times. “It helps.”

  “What did she say in the letter?”

  “To take care of my sisters and keep them together. That was what she wanted most. To keep up the ranch, since it’s our inheritance. It was hers, you know. The Griffiths have always lived here. They were from Wales originally, if you can believe it. That’s where Alice’s gift comes from.”

  “And why there’s a standing stone out there?”

  “Maybe.” She smiled. “This really is a special place to us. Mom always told us it was important to keep this link to our past. She would trot us outside every year on the summer solstice, and take us through the maze to the stone. We had to take off our shoes and feel the ground under our soles. She was careful about us wearing shoes the rest of the time, this being a ranch and all, but at that time of year she wanted to make sure we were connected to the land. That’s always stuck with me. We still do it.” The memory of her mother was so clear and bittersweet, Cass found herself blinking against the sting of tears. “I loved her so much. And I love this house—and the ranch. If I lost it—Brian, I don’t know what I’d do. Her memory is everywhere here. It would be like losing her all over again.”

  Brian didn’t say a word. Instead, he tugged her into an embrace, his arms a haven from the loneliness that always swept over her when she thought of her mother’s passing. Cass knew she shouldn’t have said anything. She kept spilling he
r guts to the enemy.

  She settled against him, breathing in his warm, male scent. Brian didn’t feel like an enemy at the moment.

  Which was more terrifying than anything else.

  “The night my mother died I was asleep in my bedroom,” Brian told Cass. “I’d gone upstairs early because I hated it when Dad gambled on the game. He always drank, too. If he won, he crowed about it like he was the one who’d scored the touchdowns. When he lost—well, you didn’t want to be around to see that. Besides, we’d already lost so much because of him.”

  Cass shifted in Brian’s arms. He kept his hold on her light, but she didn’t push away, so he went on.

  “I always wonder what would have happened if Mom had woken me up and asked me to go along—or go for her. I would have. I was young and skinny, but I was tall. Less of a mark than she was after dark.”

  “You might have been killed instead,” Cass murmured.

  “Yeah. Maybe. Maybe not, too. I was always quick. Always strong. Things would have been different if she hadn’t died.”

  Cass nodded against his shoulder. She felt so right in his arms he wondered why they hadn’t met until now. He should have known her all his life.

  “The cops woke me and my younger brother up. Dad was bawling in the living room. Bawling. Never seen the man cry before or since. I knew something was really wrong, and when they told me—” Christ, what a night that had been. Brian struggled to keep his voice even. “I hit him. I fucking hit him as hard as I could. He just sat there and took it. Said, ‘Go on. I deserve it.’” Brian broke off. “Shit. Why the fuck couldn’t he have gone to get the fucking milk?”

  Cass’s arms snaked around his neck and it was her turn to comfort him. Brian had never told this to anyone. He’d never even talked about it with Grant. He wondered how much his brother remembered of that night. “Nothing worked after that. Dad never got over it. Ended up on disability. Still lives in a dinky little apartment in Wyoming.”

  “What about your brother?”

  “Grant? He’s a chip off the old block. He’s got a lovely wife. Two kids. He’s about to lose them, he’s being such an idiot.” Brian released Cass and walked away. “I couldn’t stop Dad and I can’t stop him, either. He called me a couple of months ago—he’d taken a second mortgage on the house. Couldn’t make the payments. Too busy gambling his income away every weekend. Marissa doesn’t know. I lent him what I could. You can bet I’ll never see that money again.”