by Susan Stoker
“What the fuck?” Blake breathed.
“Wow, that sucks,” Nathan agreed.
“And the hell of it is that her parents kept the letters from her. Had them all returned.”
“I’m never getting involved with a chick with money,” Blake said resolutely. “Seriously. None of them are normal. They either are all into themselves and only want to shop, or their parents are totally wacko.”
“What rich girls do you know?” Nathan asked in confusion. “I didn’t realize you came across that many in the Army or at the community college.”
“Fuck off,” Blake told his younger brother with no heat. “I know what I’m talking about. Trust me, if you ever come across one, run like hell.”
“I can’t say anything about Grace’s need or desire to shop, but I would agree with the wacko parents thing,” Logan said dryly.
“What can we do?”
He smiled at Nathan. He might be the youngest, if only by a few minutes, but he was the first to stick his neck out for them, and for any underdog. “I don’t know yet. I’m taking things one day at a time. I told her I wanted to date her, get to know her again, and I’m pretty sure she feels the same way about me. But something’s wrong with the entire relationship with her parents. I didn’t want to rush her last night, but knowing she felt the same way about me as I did about her back then, and the fact that she’s still unattached, gives me hope that maybe we can make a fresh start. Get to know each other again and see what happens.”
“You really like her,” Blake drawled, somewhat surprised.
“I really like her,” Logan agreed.
“If she means that much to you, she means that much to us. Let us know if you need anything,” Nathan told his brother.
Logan sighed in relief. His feelings for Grace were a jumbled-up mess in his head, but he couldn’t deny the pull to her was there. He’d thought he was in love with her when he’d left, and those feelings were obviously still buried deep within him, even after ten years. One look had been all it had taken for the feelings to come back with a vengeance. “I will. We about done here? I want to see if I can catch Felicity at the gym. She took Grace home last night, and I want to make sure she was okay when Felicity dropped her off.”
“Go, we got this,” Blake reassured Logan. “We were almost done anyway. You still good for that escort job down in Colorado Springs tomorrow?”
“The one where the woman needs to come out of hiding to show up at the court hearing against her asshole ex?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Logan reassured Blake.
The three men smiled at each other. There was nothing they liked more than showing bullies that the person they’d harassed for so long was no longer alone. That they had the support of someone bigger and meaner than they were. It didn’t matter much anymore if the bully was a man or a woman. It was a heady feeling.
“Talk to you tomorrow when you get back then,” Blake said, standing up and thumping Logan on the back.
He returned the brotherly gesture and gave Nathan a chin lift. “Later.”
“Bye.”
“See ya.”
Logan left Ace Security and looked across the square at Mason Architectural Firm. If it was Monday, rather than a Sunday, he could’ve gone over and asked Grace to lunch. So they could talk some more, but knew he needed to give her space to think everything through. His own head was still reeling after finding out they’d been purposely kept apart by her parents, so he knew Grace’s would be too. He’d talk to Felicity and see what she could tell him before he approached Grace again. He wanted to have as much information as possible before he made his next move, so he didn’t inadvertently screw things up between him and Grace before they even got started.
Logan entered Rock Hard Gym, which surprisingly was just as busy on a Sunday as it was the rest of the week, and sighed in relief at seeing Felicity at the front desk.
“Hey. Got a minute?”
“Figured you’d be by sooner or later. Yeah, let me get Josh up here,” Felicity said, indicating a high school kid who’d been working at the gym for a few weeks.
Logan waited as Felicity went into a back room and came back out with the tall, gangly teenager. She gestured for Logan to follow her to her office. As soon as the door shut behind them, Logan asked impatiently, “She get home okay?”
Knowing he was talking about Grace, Felicity nodded and said, “Yeah. I haven’t heard from her this morning yet, but I’m not surprised. You know she has a secret cell phone, right?”
“What? No. Why the fuck does she need a secret phone?”
Felicity shrugged and sat in her chair behind her desk. “Her parents pay for the phone she uses for work stuff and scrutinize each and every number she calls. They have it tracked as well, and Grace is convinced they can read every text and email she sends. She has an alternate email address that we use to talk to each other. I also keep some clothes in her size at my place and in my car, so when we go out, she can dress in something comfortable and appropriate. Hell, I think I have just as many outfits for her in my closet as I do of my own.”
Logan thought his head was going to explode. When he came back to town, he’d bought into Grace’s outward appearance . . . and was ashamed of himself. He’d thought she was stuck up, cold, and too good to talk to someone like him. The more he learned about her, the more he questioned everything he’d thought before.
“She has her own place, right? Why does she still spend so much time over at her parents’ house?”
Felicity eyed Logan carefully. “I wasn’t around when you were growing up, but I’ve talked a bit to Cole.”
Logan didn’t like the fact that his friend had been gossiping about him, but gave Felicity the “go on” motion with his hand.
“You and your brothers went through a lot. And this is going to sound wrong, but hear me out. Your mom hit you, right?”
“Yeah.”
“She threw things at you. Left marks on your body.”
“You have a point?” Logan bit out.
“I do. Were you afraid of your mom?”
Logan ground his teeth together. It somehow felt as if he was sitting in front of a shrink, and he didn’t like it. “Of course.”
“No,” Felicity shook her head. “I mean, I know you hated when she smacked you around, but when you weren’t around her . . . were you scared of what she could do to you?”
Logan thought about it for a long moment before answering. “Not really. Not being around her was a relief. That didn’t mean that I wasn’t scared of what would happen when I got home, but school felt safe. She couldn’t reach me there. I liked it, it was an escape from her.”
“And you left town as soon as you could to get away from her.”
It hadn’t been a question, but Logan treated it as if it was anyway. “Yeah. All three of us did.”
Felicity nodded. “And once you left, her control over you was over. But what if you couldn’t get away from her? What if you had no idea if you turned a corner she’d be there? What if you didn’t have a safe place?”
“Grace’s parents don’t hit her,” Logan stated, seeing where Felicity was going with her comments.
“You’re right. They don’t,” she agreed immediately. “But they control her nevertheless. They have spies all over this town. Grace works at their company. She has her own place, but they manipulate her with lies about their health and how “old” they are to get her to spend most weekends at their house so they can keep some control over her. They pay her bills. Her mother takes her shopping and tells her she can’t be trusted to pick out clothes she actually looks good in. Grace literally can’t do anything without them finding out about it. The fact that I can convince her to sneak out of their house and come to a party like the one last night is a miracle. The fact that she defies them to have lunch with me, when we both know her parents can’t stand me, is a miracle. The fact that she applied to go back to school t
o get a degree that she actually wants so she can do something she’s always wanted to do rather than being a damn secretary slaving for her parents’ company is a miracle.”
“Felicity-”
“I’m not done,” she scolded, shifting forward in her seat and piercing Logan with her intent gaze.
“Sorry. Continue.”
“Grace told me about the letters last night. It was the first I’d heard about them. She never got them, Logan. She wouldn’t lie about that. If you wrote her, she didn’t get any of them.”
“I wrote her,” Logan stated in a flat voice.
“I believe you did. And as I told her last night, there’s abuse, then there’s abuse. Make no mistake, Grace is one of the strongest women I’ve ever known in my life. It might not look like it at first glance. You might think she’s meek and docile and a total doormat, but she’s got a will of iron. If someone were hitting her, causing her to bruise, she’d have sympathy from everyone in town, and her parents know it. But they’re sneaky. They have her so scared to defy them, she can only manage to rebel every now and then, and only in small, safe ways, like the tattoo on the back of her neck. She wants their love and approval so badly, but they hold it out of her reach, dangling it like a damn carrot. But last night she made a decision. I thought at first she was giving up. She was this close, Logan.” Felicity held her hand up, her thumb and index finger almost touching.
“I honestly thought she was telling me good-bye forever. That she was going to do something stupid to herself. But she made a decision not to give up. At least I’m pretty sure she did. She’s determined to break free of them once and for all. To do what she wants to do with her life, no matter if they approve or not. And that’s Grace’s strength that most people never see. And I have you to thank for her sudden need for independence. I’ve begged until I’m blue in the face, but she never listened to me. She never had the yearning to put aside what Margaret and Walter Mason thought of her . . . until now. Until you told her that you wrote her and said whatever you said to her when you came back to the gym.”
Logan clenched his jaw. He should’ve seen the signs. He’d observed enough abused women to recognize it for what it was. He’d been an idiot. Letting his own experiences blind him to Grace’s plight.
“What can I do?”
“Don’t give up on her,” Felicity answered immediately. “She said she was going to talk to her parents. I have no idea how that will go. She might backpedal and chicken out. It could take awhile for her to really break the strings that are holding her there. They’ve manipulated her her entire life, so they’ll certainly try to continue to do so, no matter what she says. I think Grace is scared to death of her parents, even though she’d deny it and say that they’re only doing what they do to make her a better person. She hinted that they’d done more than merely humiliate her, but she wouldn’t talk about it. But, unfortunately, unlike you, she doesn’t have a safe place to get away from them. They show up at her apartment unannounced all the time. She’s never free of their watch over her.”
“Fuck,” Logan swore.
“Yeah,” Felicity agreed.
“I’ll make sure she always has somewhere to go, somewhere safe to be, if her parents take it badly that she wants to do her own thing,” Logan declared.
Felicity chuckled, but it held no humor. “I told her the same thing. Believe it or not, she’s just as scared of what her parents could do to other people as she is about what they could do to her.”
“What could they do?”
“Look what her mother did to you and her with the letters,” Felicity told him without humor. “That was child’s play compared to some of the rumors I’ve heard about them. They have ways of getting to people. I don’t know how many others in this town they’ve coerced into doing what they want, but I can guarantee Grace isn’t the only person’s head they’ve fucked with. Besides that, money talks. Grace was worried the gym could go under with enough pressure from them.”
“Fuck that. This isn’t 1822. Castle Rock is small, yeah, but Margaret and Walter can’t control everyone in Denver or Colorado Springs. It’s insane.”
“Give her some time, Logan. For what it’s worth, I’m on your side. If anyone can convince her to break free from them, I think it’s you.”
“Thanks. I’m not sure I’m worthy of that support, but I appreciate it all the same. I should’ve done more back then, and even right when I got back to town. I shouldn’t have just let it go.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But what’s done is done. You can’t go back,” Felicity told him.
“I can’t. But I can do now what I should’ve done back then.”
“Yeah. You can.”
“Thanks, Felicity. I appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome. But if you hurt her-”
“I won’t.” The two words held all the conviction Logan could muster. Hearing from Felicity what Grace had been through, was going through, made him want her for himself all the more. He wanted to be her safe place. He needed to be that for her.
Felicity eyed Logan for a long moment before standing up. “Good. Maybe between the two of us, we can convince her that her parents can’t hurt her once she gets out from under their thumb. I know she wants their love, but I don’t think at this point she’s ever gonna get it.”
“My brothers will help too.”
“I figured.”
“You’ll let me know when you hear from her?”
“I will.”
Logan reached out a hand, and when Felicity shook it, he hauled her into a hug. “I know we don’t know each other that well, but fuck it. Any friend of Grace’s is a friend of mine. Thank you.”
Felicity laughed and hugged Logan back. “Ditto. Now, get out of here. I have a business to run.” She shoved him gently out of her arms and toward the door.
“I have a job down in the Springs tomorrow, so I won’t be around, but if you need anything, Nathan and Blake will be here,” Logan told her.
“Got it. Be safe.”
“Piece of cake,” Logan told her as they walked out of her office.
He waved as he left the building and thought over everything Felicity had said. Had he missed any clues back in high school about Grace’s home life? He wasn’t sure. He’d been so concerned about his own mother hurting him that it hadn’t even occurred to him that Grace’s home life was anything but idyllic.
Hell, it hadn’t occurred to him in the ten years that had followed that maybe there was a reason she’d returned his letters. He’d just assumed she hadn’t wanted to talk to him anymore.
He had a lot to learn, and a lot to make up for. Grace Mason had no clue how her life was about to change.
Chapter Eleven
“Mother. Father. Can we talk?”
Margaret sighed as if her daughter wanting to talk to her in the morning was a cardinal sin. She put down her knife and fork and turned to Grace. “It can’t wait until tonight? You know I don’t do well with stress before I’ve had my breakfast.”
Grace swallowed and pushed on. “I’m sorry, Mother, but I wanted to talk to you both before you got too busy.”
“Spit it out then,” Walter growled, obviously annoyed that his habit of reading the paper at breakfast, and ignoring both his child and wife, was interrupted.
Deciding it would be better to get it over with quickly, like taking off a Band-Aid, Grace said, “I’m going to be starting on my second degree soon. It’s in marketing. I never wanted to major in office administration and have always loved advertising and the psychology behind it. Not only that, but it’s time I got out of your hair. I’ll always be around when you need me, but I can’t keep staying here every weekend.”
Not one muscle moved on her mother’s face. There was silence in the dining room for a moment, then Margaret asked in a monotone voice, “Is that it?”
“Um . . . yeah.”
“No.”
Grace watched in disbelief as her mother picked up her fork and co
ntinued eating her scrambled eggs as if her daughter hadn’t spoken.
She tried again. “I know this is a surprise, and I’m sorry. But I’m twenty-eight. I have my own apartment, and you guys need to be on your own as much as I do. I’ll still be nearby, but this way we all get some privacy.”
“Grace, your mother said no. We need your help around here. We aren’t as young as we used to be, and you need to show some respect for us. This conversation is over.”
Grace flushed at the reprimand from her father. She’d known the talk most likely wouldn’t go well, but this was ridiculous. She tried to put some steel in her voice. “You guys are fine. There are lots of servants here who can help you. I’ll come over every now and then, but my spending the night here is over.”
Margaret sighed. A huge heaving sigh as if Grace were a toddler throwing a tantrum and her mother was tired of hearing it. Her mother very carefully put down her fork again and wiped her mouth with the white linen napkin, pressed into crisp points. She folded it and put it down on the table and stood.
“Walter.”
She didn’t say anything other than her husband’s name, but it was obviously enough for him to understand what she wanted because he got up and left the room.
“Mother, I know this is a surprise, but-”
“Come with me, Grace.”
“Can we discuss this a bit more?” Grace was even more nervous now. She didn’t like the look in her mother’s eyes. Even though she hadn’t raised her voice, Grace knew she was pissed. She’d seen that look only a couple times in her life, and each time had not gone well for her.
“No. Now, come on.”
Grace reluctantly stood and gasped when Margaret grasped her upper arm and tugged her toward her bedroom. Grace knew she could’ve pulled away, her mother wasn’t that strong, but was reluctant to show such blatant defiance after her bold announcement.
She followed along behind her mother docilely, hoping she’d have a chance to convince her that her moving on and breaking the tight ties was really the best decision for all of them.