by Leah Brooke
“I guess you’re tired of having a woman who stands up for herself.” She said it in such a low voice that Clay almost missed it, but she continued on before he could say anything.
“I’ll be back tomorrow. I just need to be alone tonight.”
“You don’t need to be alone. You need to be with us!” Clay winced inwardly as the knot in his stomach turned to ice.
He kept his voice low, struggling to speak calmly when he was anything but. “You said you’ll be back tomorrow. You didn’t say you were coming home. You’re scaring the hell out of me, Jesse. If you think I’m letting you go, you’re very much mistaken. Just talk to us. Let me explain.”
Her silence scared him, and for several heart-stopping seconds, he feared she’d hung up. When she spoke again, the weariness and distance in her tone frightened him even more.
“Clay, I really don’t want to talk about this tonight. I’ve got to go—”
“No. Don’t you hang up on me, Jesse Erickson!” He scrubbed a hand over his face, praying that Lucas would be able to pinpoint her location before she hung up. Worry for her ate him alive.
“Baby? Are you cold? You left without your coat. Please tell me you’re someplace warm, honey.”
The sob in her sigh tore at him, the effect also apparent on both Rio and Lucas as they listened.
Rio sank into a chair, hanging his head, his hair mussed from running his hands through it countless times in the last few hours.
A muscle worked in Lucas’s jaw, his steely gaze holding Clay’s and his stonelike expression even harder and more intimidating than ever.
Jesse’s voice, so sweet and with a tremble in it that brought another lump to Clay’s throat, came over the speaker, softer now than before.
“I’m fine, Clay. I’m a big girl, remember? I’m not one of those sweet little things that fall all over you. I’m used to taking care of myself, or have you forgotten?”
The reminder of the cold, withdrawn woman he’d met two years earlier, a woman that had thought herself incapable of loving or being loved, nearly took him to his knees.
“I haven’t forgotten a single thing about you.”
The ice in his stomach seemed to spread, making him cold all the way to the bone and stiff with fear.
Her tone, a tone he’d never hoped to hear again, sounded so much like the one she’d used when he’d first met her that his heart skipped a beat and he actually felt dizzy for a moment.
Losing Jesse would kill him.
He didn’t even try to keep his frustration and fear out of his voice, hoping to get through to her.
He had to get through to her.
“Jesse, of course I’m worried about you. You’re my wife. You disappeared into the night without no coat and no dinner. I’m sure you didn’t eat anything. I know you, baby. When you’re upset, Rio and I have to practically force you to eat. That means you’re cold and hungry and I can’t get to you to make you eat, or to keep you warm. You’re hurting and I can’t hold you.”
His arms ached to hold her close.
“Please tell me where you are, Jesse. We need to talk, to straighten this out. I can’t stop thinking about the way you looked at me.” That look of confusion and hurt in her eyes would haunt him forever.
Jesse’s choked sigh cut his heart to shreds. “We’ll talk, Clay. Tomorrow. Look, I’m sorry I acted like a coward and ran off that way, but it was such a shock. I’ve been stupid and never saw it coming. I should have paid more attention. I should have realized that you felt neglected.”
Her voice lowered, so low he had trouble hearing her.
“I’ve always suspected it would end some day. I knew better. I just thought I would see it coming.”
“What?” Clay barked into the phone, whirling to meet Rio’s eyes. The half-crazed look in his brother’s eyes probably mirrored his own, and he would bet anything his brother’s insides twisted with the same agony his did. He swallowed heavily, sick with nausea at the fact that she really had assumed that one day he and Rio would fall out of love with her.
Didn’t she realize they’d spent a lifetime waiting for her?
“Jesse, are you out of your fucking mind?” He ignored Lucas’s warning glare, knowing damned well how to talk to his wife without anyone else’s advice.
“Damn it, Jesse, I’m not interested in anyone but you. Jesus, Jesse, I thought you knew by now how Rio and I both feel about you.”
“Yeah, I thought I did, too. Listen, I don’t want to get into this now, but I heard you and Rio talking in the kitchen. I heard you say that you knew I didn’t suspect anything and that I believed you when you lied to me about being at the club. I heard you say you were meeting someone, obviously someone you didn’t want me to know about. I’ve been so busy worried about Jake and Nat that I didn’t even think to wonder about us. I was so stupid.”
Clay dropped into one of the leather chairs in front of Lucas’s desk, reliving the anger and disillusionment he’d experienced when he’d overheard and misunderstood one of Jesse’s phone conversations shortly after they’d first met.
At that time he’d been sure it was over between them. The knowledge that Jesse now believed the same made him feel as if his insides had been ripped out.
He knew her well, but had become so used to hearing her voice filled with happiness, that he felt now as if he spoke to a stranger.
Her voice broke. “Clay, you sounded so serious and so torn. We both know you wouldn’t lie to me unless there was a good reason. For you to be so upset and still meet her, it could only mean one thing. You can’t stay away from her. You’re in love.”
Clay wanted to smash something. “Damn it, Jesse. I love you! There’s no other fucking woman!”
Jesse blew out a breath and he pictured her looking up at the ceiling and blinking back tears.
“I can’t get my head around this right now. I just wanted you to know I’m okay. I’ll be back tomorrow. I just need a little time alone to think and to get my bearings back.”
On a sob, she disconnected before Clay could stop her.
Rio rubbed his eyes before turning his head to meet Clay’s eyes. “We haven’t spent a single night apart since we got married. I don’t think I could ever sleep without her next to me. How the hell could she think we could ever be involved with another woman?”
Clay sighed, forcing himself to relax his hold on the phone before he crushed it in his hands. He needed it in case Jesse called.
“She heard us talking about meeting Jake, only somehow Jesse thinks it was a woman we were meeting. Hell, I don’t even remember what we said, but she figured that if we were lying to her and meeting someone behind her back, it had to be a woman.”
Lucas came to his feet, reaching for the jacket he’d hooked over the back of his chair. He came around his desk and touched Rio’s shoulder. “Well, you won’t have to be without your wife tonight. I’ve got her location. She’s about three hours west of here. I’ll go with you to make sure she hasn’t moved, and drive her car back. I’m sure you both want to be alone with her.”
Clay headed for the door, anxious to get to his wife. “Damned right. Thanks, Lucas. I appreciate this. I don’t know what we would have done if you hadn’t been able to find her. I can’t imagine what tonight would have been like if all we could do was sit around and wait. I’m not good at doing nothing.”
Lucas nodded, his expression grim. “Well, you’ll have three hours to figure out how the hell to get Jesse back. Everyone loves her and I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes if she leaves.”
Clay winced at the thought, the knots in his stomach so tight he wanted to vomit.
“I wouldn’t want to be in my own shoes. I couldn’t live without her, Lucas.”
* * * *
So nervous he couldn’t sit still, Rio shifted in his seat again, unable to find a comfortable position. Each mile they drove seemed to take forever, the need to get to Jesse as soon as possible making him jittery.
“I c
an’t believe Jesse could even think we’d ever be involved with someone else. Christ, that woman is everything to me!” Rio stuck out a hand in front of him. “I’m so fucking mad and scared I’m shaking.”
Hearing Lucas speaking from the backseat into his cell phone to one of his partners, Rio glanced at Clay. “What the hell’s in that head of hers? Haven’t we told her, shown her how much we love her every fucking day?”
Clay’s jaw tightened, barely visible in the low light of the dashboard. “I thought so. I can’t imagine what the hell we did wrong. I knew sometimes she was insecure about us, but I would never have believed she would fly off the handle that way. If she overheard something that made her suspicious, she should have talked to us. Hell, she’s never had trouble keeping us on our toes before.”
The self-anger in Clay’s thoughtful tone made him feel even worse. Clenching his fists on his lap, Rio stared out the window, his anger growing by the minute.
“Look at this. It’s so dark, you can’t see a thing.” Squinting against the approaching headlights, he cursed.
“Hardly any traffic. Nothing around for miles.”
Clay cursed through gritted teeth. “And Jesse drove this in the dark. If she’d had any car trouble…”
Disconnecting from a call to one of his partners, Lucas leaned forward.
“I’m glad you bought her that new car. The other one was a real piece of junk. You might want to think about letting me hook up a GPS system to it now.”
Rio half turned in his seat. “Do it. When you take her car, hook it up, and let us know when we can come pick it up. I can’t go through this again.”
Clay attempted to laugh, but it fell short. “I can only imagine the kind of shit you and the others will have hooked up to your woman.”
Lucas sighed. “If we’re ever lucky enough to find a woman like yours, we’re sure as hell going to make sure she’s safe. She won’t get a chance to take off like this. If she even tries it, I’ll turn her over my knee and make sure she doesn’t sit down for a week.”
Rio turned to stare in the distance, using his anger to keep the terror at bay.
“Yeah, well good luck with that.”
Despite her larger-than-life spirit, and her ability to handle herself in most situations, Jesse was still a woman, and seemed so delicate and fragile to him.
She’d called both of them overprotective and chauvinistic many times in the last two years. He couldn’t deny it, and couldn’t be any other way with her. She was his world, and the thought of anything happening to her scared the hell out of him.
She was his life, and had been since the moment he’d first laid eyes on her.
One look.
One touch.
It had been as simple, and as complicated as that as he realized almost immediately that he’d found the woman he’d spent a lifetime searching for.
“God. No!”
Jolted from his thoughts by Clay’s horror-filled shout, Rio followed his brother’s gaze, and felt his entire world crumble around him.
The curses pouring from Lucas seemed to come from a great distance as his mind went numb.
Unable to tear his gaze away from the terrifying sight in the distance, Rio braced himself with a hand on the door and one on the dashboard as Clay drove like a madman toward the horror.
Clay cursed soundly. “Lucas, please tell me that’s not Jesse’s hotel.”
Lucas cursed. “It is. Clay, for God’s sake, don’t wreck before we can get to her.”
When they pulled into the parking lot several heart-pounding seconds later, Rio jumped out of the truck before they’d even come to a stop, racing toward the burning two-story building. He screamed his wife’s name in a voice filled with horror and desperation, whipping his head around frantically for any sign of her.
Nothing in his life had ever been as important as getting to her. If anything happened to Jesse, he didn’t know how he would go on.
Racing toward the fire, he ignored the shouts from all around him, caring about nothing but dragging her from the flames.
With a hand over his mouth and nose, he started into the burning building, pausing when he saw a flash of red from the second floor.
Jesse!
Chapter Three
Jesse couldn’t stand the noise anymore. She’d turned on the television for some background sound in the too-quiet room, but now it just got on her nerves. With jerky movements, she turned it off and tossed the remote aside, groaning when she heard the loud voices and music coming from the bar downstairs.
She’d been told at check-in that the hotel was hosting a convention, and it sounded as if the seminars had finished for the day. It appeared the partygoers from the bar had moved some of the party out to the parking lot.
Now, the noise came from right below her window.
She started toward the phone to call the manager, and almost immediately decided against it. She stopped with her hand on the receiver, lifting it again as she sank down on the bed and pulled the blanket tighter. She wouldn’t be getting any sleep tonight anyway, and figured it would be a shame to ruin their fun.
The thought of how much she could be enjoying tonight had her blinking back tears. It seemed impossible that only a few hours ago, she’d been happy and secure in a marriage she valued above all else.
In a matter of minutes, everything had changed.
Now that the shock had passed and her mind began to clear, she began to see that there had to be some sort of an explanation. She considered calling, but she needed to see their faces when she spoke to them again.
She had to have misunderstood something. If Clay and Rio didn’t love her, or want her anymore, she would have known it.
She would have felt it.
No. She couldn’t believe it was over between them. Something had to be terribly wrong.
That something was her.
It had been a shock to her that she’d fallen apart that way, but her sister’s marriage problems had made her even more insecure than she’d realized. Because of it, she’d been quick to believe the worst, something that pissed her off immensely.
She would go back tomorrow and give Clay and Rio a chance to explain, but first she had to make peace with herself and deal with her own issues.
Neither Clay nor Rio had ever been shy about expressing their feelings, and neither one of them ever did anything in half measures.
If they had something to say to her, they would have said it.
Sneaking around had never been their style.
Both men had always been hard and outspoken, and honest to a fault.
Shaking her head, she couldn’t hold back a smile. Those qualities had always been what she loved most about them.
She relaxed just a little, but knew she wouldn’t relax more until she spoke to them, and it would be a long time before she relaxed completely.
She’d learned something about herself that had shaken her to her core.
Clay and Rio had obviously been lying to her about something, and she’d take that up with them as soon as she got back home, but her own reaction to it and swift leap to believe they’d found someone else really shook her.
She’d thought herself stronger than that, but just the thought of losing them had nearly destroyed her.
Coming to her feet, she reached for her phone again to look at the time. Surprised to see that it was already almost two in the morning, she paused, wondering if she should start back tonight.
She wouldn’t be getting any sleep anyway, and if she waited until morning to start back, she would be even more tired.
Having made her decision, she wanted to get out of here and get back to Desire as soon as possible.
Tossing off the blanket, she reached for her purse, pausing when she smelled smoke. Thinking it might have to do with the party downstairs, she went to the window and jerked the curtains aside, her heart dropping when she saw nothing but thick smoke and the lick of flames off to her left.
Heari
ng screams and shouts from below, she struggled to see through the smoke, but saw nothing but an occasional glow from below. Panicked now, she raced to the door, relieved to find it cool.
With shaking hands, she adjusted her purse, fitting the strap over her head to keep it secure in front of her before unlocking the door. She opened it slowly, inch by inch, and seeing the raging fire, sucked in a breath, regretting it almost immediately as smoke filled her room and she began coughing.
This couldn’t be happening.
Tears filled her eyes, tears from the smoke mingling with tears of fear that she would never see her husbands or their sons ever again.
Panicked people raced all around her, and she had to hold on to the railing to keep her balance as she turned right in an attempt to make her way to the front of the building, away from the flames.
The smoke seemed to get thicker, the breeze blowing the smoke and flames toward her.
“Jesse!”
Still coughing, Jesse stopped, turning toward the frantic voice coming from somewhere to her left and below her. Deciding she must have been hallucinating, she hurried along the now-deserted walkway, holding the neckline of her red sweater over her mouth and nose in a desperate attempt to escape the smoke.
The roar of the flames just seemed to get louder. Several people shouted, and when sirens approached, the noise became deafening.
Still, she could swear she heard her name called from several different directions, the voices becoming louder and more frantic by the second.
It almost sounded like Clay and Rio, but that would have been impossible.
More tears ran down her cheeks. Her longing to be with them had become so strong she imagined their voices calling her.
She could hear nothing then over the sound of the fire truck, but when the engine stopped, she heard it again.
“Jesse, damn it! Where are you?”
Rio!
This time the voice came from almost directly below her.