by Lori Ryan
She looked up at him and nodded, relieved to see in his eyes he believed her about Ellis’s innocence. He believed Ellis didn’t do this…. Well, maybe he didn’t believe that in his heart the way she believed it in hers, but he was willing to listen to her and back Ellis up when she did. And that meant more to PJ than she could ever say.
PJ crossed to Debra while they waited for the officers to finish up and begin transporting Ellis.
“I did an interview on the flight over here,” PJ told Debra. “ I called Whitney Paulsen over at ZNN and did an exclusive with her. She’s always been fair and a lot nicer to deal with than most reporters. I told her the whole story about Jimmy and the baby and the adoption. Since Matthew is all right with this coming out and Jimmy Mondo is dead, I felt I’d rather get it out in the open than continue to hide it. At least, that way, no one can hold this over me again.”
Gabe’s arms came around her, and Debra smiled at her. “I think that was a smart move.”
PJ nodded. “It was time. I should have been honest about it from the beginning. What Jimmy did was illegal. I should have dealt with the shame and been honest. I should have gone after him years ago for what he did.”
“You shouldn’t have done that,” came Lydia’s voice behind her.
PJ turned to her in confusion. Lydia’s voice was cold and hard, but when all eyes turned to her, she smiled and waved off the questioning looks.
“I just mean you should have talked to Debra and me about it first. We should have coordinated that together as a team. We could have arranged for more coverage and turned things to your advantage a bit more. We can get a lot of mileage out of this.”
PJ suppressed a sigh and looked at Ellis where he still sat handcuffed and waiting, an officer standing over him. He looked lost and confused and alone, and it broke her heart. “I don’t want mileage out of this, Lydia. I want to get it out in the open and begin to live my life without secrets and fear and humiliation. I’m not looking to profit from this.”
Lydia shook her head. “No, of course not. I’m sorry, PJ. I should have thought before I blurted that out. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
PJ watched as the officers helped Ellis stand, his hands still cuffed behind his back. His voice shook as he spoke, seemingly to no one in particular. “Why didn’t she love me?” he asked and PJ’s heart broke for him. He turned teary eyes to his sister who looked back at him, her expression blank. “Why, Lydia, why?”
***
Gabe stayed by PJ’s side as they made their way to the police station. Ellis’s mom arrived shortly after and the attorney she had with her appeared to be more than competent. The attorney had the officers put Ellis on suicide watch, and his office was already initiating the motions needed to push to have Ellis moved to a secure mental health facility as soon as possible. The attorney wasn’t sure they’d win, but he was willing to try.
PJ was beside herself when the officers told them he’d be moved to the county jail within a few hours. There were statements to take and reports to write up and then, when the formalities were finished, he’d be transferred. Gabe winced when he thought of the fragile Ellis in prison. He truly hoped PJ was right that it wasn’t Ellis, and they’d be able to find a way to clear his name and get him released quickly.
Gabe also noticed the strange dynamic between Lydia and her mom. Her mother seemed to treat Lydia as if she were just another part of PJ’s team, rather than her daughter. And Lydia acted the same way, right down to ensuring the officers had Ellis’s insulin for his diabetes maintenance and releasing a statement to the press in a businesslike manner. There didn’t appear to be any sisterly concern for Ellis at all. But, PJ had said Lydia was like that. Like a machine. He just hadn’t realized she meant it quite so literally.
By the time they returned to his suite and left Chad and Zach out in the living room watching over things, he knew PJ was completely wiped out. She’d have to do interviews in the morning to respond to the questions about why one of her team had been arrested, and to respond to all of the questions that would arise now that the story about Matthew’s biological parentage had gone out. Lydia had responded to a few of the reporters’ questions outside the police station, but there would be more to answer in the coming days.
Gabe left PJ sitting on the edge of his bed and stepped into the bathroom to draw her a hot bath. He added a squeeze of the bath gel his hotel supplied from their spa line of beauty products and tested the temperature with his hand. When he went back to the bedroom to get PJ, she just watched him with wide eyes as he pulled her into the bathroom and stripped her clothes off. She was beautiful and soft and warm. Part of him wanted nothing more than to wrap himself around her and bury himself to the hilt in her hot, sweet body, but it was obvious she didn’t need that right now. She looked positively wrecked. All he wanted to do was take care of her. To take the stunned, beaten look off her face.
He held her hand as she sat down in the tub, but when he tried to draw away to get a washcloth, she didn’t let go of his hand.
“Come in with me,” she whispered. “Please?” she begged before he could say no—and he couldn't deny her. Hell, he didn’t want to. As much as he didn’t want to push her into anything, he couldn’t hold back any longer. Not when she looked at him like that. Like he was the only thing in the world she needed.
The water splashed and rose up to the top of the bath when he stepped in, but he pulled her around, settling her into his arms, nestled between his legs. His cock was hard and practically screaming with frustration, but he wrapped his arms around her and began rubbing the tight muscles in her arms and shoulders. He let his hands trail down her arms and brush forward to her breasts—full, luscious breasts that peeked out through the bubbles that floated on top of the hot water. As her nipples hardened under his fingers, she gasped, and his name came out on a long moan.
Gabe couldn’t get enough. She pressed against his hard length—God what he wouldn’t do to slip inside her slick heat and make love to her hot and hard. But not yet. She laid her head back against him and turned it, letting him capture her mouth in his. Nothing had ever felt this incredible. He’d never wanted anything to last so long, to go on endlessly. He wanted PJ in his arms forever.
Gabe let one hand travel down her stomach, between her legs where she was so slick and swollen. All for him. When his fingers pressed into her, she gasped against his mouth, and he heard himself moaning now. God, how he wanted this woman. He’d meant to take this slow, but there wasn’t any stopping this. She wriggled back against him, pressing closer still, pushing her ass back into him until he grew harder and thicker. So ready for her.
PJ twisted, and he drew his legs closer together, knowing what she wanted. As she straddled him, he knew they needed to get out of the tub. He needed to get her into his bedroom where he could get to a condom, but it appeared she had other things in mind. PJ glided back and forth over him, the heat of her body driving him mad as he let himself get lost in those eyes. She could torment him forever, and if he died, he’d die a happy man.
Gabe’s hands found her breasts again, rubbing his fingers softly over the peaked nipples, pinching her lightly…drawing that moan from her again. It ended on a whimper.
“I want you inside me,” she said and Gabe pushed her back to rise out of the tub, then pulled her out of the water with him. They fell onto the bed dripping and tangled, but he managed to reach for his bag next to the nightstand and felt through it until he found the box of condoms he’d stashed in there before leaving his house. It seemed like a million years ago.
Her eyes were on his, trusting and open, as he sheathed himself and then pressed his cock to her wet slit…seeking. He teased back and forth and watched her mouth open in a silent moan, and her heavy-lidded eyes close halfway at the sensation. He pressed inside, wishing the amazing feeling of entering her for the first time could last forever, go on forever. He didn’t move quickly…but wasn’t slow either. His body needed to be inside her all
the way. To his amazement, her warmth wrapped around him, milking him. He lay his forehead on hers and paused, just soaking in the sensations, feeling her so tight around him.
“You feel incredible, Pru. All for me,” he said and she nodded.
“All for you,” she said as her hips began to move, and he thought his eyes would roll to the back of his head with the pleasure she gave him.
***
PJ couldn’t stay still. Gabe filled her so completely, making her wild with the need to feel more, feel everything as sensations rained down on her. His mouth was on her lips, then her neck, then her breasts as she became more swollen, more wet with need. He drove into her again and again, and she knew, somehow, it would never be enough. She would never tire of him, of this connection to him.
“Gabe,” she moaned as he drew back and teased her with shorter strokes, drawing out the pleasure rushing through her. His hand dropped between them and his fingers found her clit, pressing, circling, driving her mad. Her muscles clamped down on him as she felt herself fall over the edge in what seemed like record time. He pushed deep and hard and long again, abandoning the small strokes, filling her as he came with her.
When the aftershocks left her system, she wrapped her arms around Gabe where he’d fallen half on top of her, half to the side as if he held his weight off her.
“Relax. I won’t break,” she said and pulled him down closer. He groaned, but sank onto her. The weight of him felt good. Reassuring in some way.
God, she already felt so much for this man. So much it scared her when she thought about it. So she tried not to. She wouldn’t let what had happened with Jimmy Mondo and Kirt Tolleson spoil this for her.
Gabe rose up, leaned on one elbow and looked into her eyes. She felt vulnerable, like he could see everything she was thinking, and more.
“Any regrets?” he whispered, kissing the knuckles of the hand he held in his.
She shook her head. “No.”
“Ready to do that again?” he asked. He dropped his head to her breasts, beginning a trail that led him under the covers, and that took her breath away again, just as quickly as she’d gotten it back. And it was quickly obvious he wasn’t kidding about doing it again.
Chapter Fifteen
The call came at five am, waking them both. There had been a screw-up at the prison. When Ellis had been transferred to the county lockup from the local precinct, somehow the suicide watch hadn’t been communicated. At three am, Ellis had hanged himself using strips of his prison sheets.
Gabe held PJ as she cried, and he spoke quietly to her, telling her it would be all right, but he knew it wouldn’t be. Her heart was breaking, and he didn’t know how to fix it. Ellis had left a note with only the words ‘I’m so sorry, PJ’ written on it. The officer who called them said the note was proof of his guilt, and he knew the rest of the team would believe that as well. The police felt he’d been so guilt-ridden over what he’d done to PJ and to Jimmy that he’d taken his own life.
Gabe had seen the look in PJ’s eyes when she heard the words he’d written, too. She didn’t want to think Ellis had done this, but he saw in her eyes that she was beginning to believe he had. That maybe it had been faithful, loyal, so-in-love-with-her Ellis all this time.
It made sense. He’d had a crush on her for so long. Gabe suspected he’d seen her putting her journal away at some point and had stolen it. Probably to see if she ever wrote about Ellis. And, instead, he’d found out her biggest secret. That she’d given up a child just as his own mother had done to him.
The one thing Ellis hadn’t learned from the journal was Matt’s true identity. PJ always wrote about Matthew as her cousin. She wrote about her birth child and how she missed him, missed holding him and seeing him every day, but she didn’t connect the two up in her journal. She had told Gabe it was a way to protect herself a bit. Never letting herself think of Matthew as that child. As hers. It allowed her to love him in the way she needed to: as her cousin, not her son.
PJ took a deep, shuddering breath. “Do you think it was him? Was it Ellis all this time?” she asked, as though reading his thoughts.
“I don’t know, sweetheart. I’d like to think he wouldn’t have done this, but something made him sorry. Something drove him to kill himself. Guilt is a pretty powerful thing. Maybe he couldn’t reconcile loving you and hating you all at the same time. Loving the you he’d known all these years, but hating that you’d given up a child. Chad said Ellis’s early years were really hard. He’d been in a lot of foster homes, and even a group home situation before Lydia’s parents adopted him. To him, the happy ending you were able to find with Matthew’s adoption didn’t seem possible.”
“I just don’t want to think he could have done this. He’s always been there for me. Even though he knew I didn’t feel the same way for him that he did for me, he was always my friend. He was always so good. I can’t see him taking a life. Even someone like Jimmy. The Ellis I knew wasn’t capable of that.”
Gabe kissed her temple. “Try to get some rest, honey. We probably won’t ever know why he did any of this. You need to rest.”
She closed her eyes, but he felt her tears continue to fall, and all he could do was hold her tightly, until finally, she fell asleep.
***
They traveled to Ellis’s mom’s home in Massachusetts for the funeral. Chad returned to Connecticut, but Zach and two of his people stayed on. They’d be staying with PJ until they put new security in place—security vetted by both Zach and Chad.
Gabe watched as PJ spoke quietly to Ellis’s mom after the funeral when they’d all returned to the house. Ellis’s mother smiled weakly and nodded, and Gabe knew PJ was doing her best to comfort her.
He had also seen a more human side to Lydia during the funeral trip. Oh, she had been a whirlwind, organizing the funeral service, the catering for the after-funeral get-together, ensuring notices got in the paper…. That type of thing. But, Lydia had also been there to console her mom. He watched now as Lydia and PJ walked arm in arm up the stairs. Lydia had said she would gather some photos of Ellis for PJ to take with her, so he assumed that’s where they were headed.
Their heads were bowed together as they murmured to one another.
This had to be hard on Lydia, even if she had sometimes treated Ellis more like an employee than a brother. But, Gabe had never worked with family, so maybe that was necessary to keep things running smoothly at work.
Gabe left Zach by the buffet table and wandered into the den off the living room. There were a few people here and there in the room, talking in small groups, but it was much less crowded than the living room. He took in the walls lined with family photos. There were dozens of them. They seemed to go in mostly chronological order, beginning on the left side of the room when Lydia was just an infant. Gabe looked at the photos and continued to the point where Lydia must have been about fourteen years old. It struck Gabe as odd how often Lydia was being held by her father in the photos. Even in all of the early pictures where she was a tiny infant, she was in her father’s arms, not her mother’s. Perhaps her mom was the photographer in the family….
When Lydia was about fourteen years old, someone else entered the pictures. There was Ellis grinning at the camera, always next to his mother. The family dynamic was incredibly bizarre, and the preferences were more than a little evident to anyone looking at them. In fact, Gabe wondered how Lydia’s mom could make such a showcase of the photos. He would have thought she’d hide the photos away. Or at the very least, that she would have noticed what the pictures showed over the years—that she preferred her son—and made changes. But, apparently she hadn’t.
The information was there in color for him, the whole story laid out. For a couple of pictures after Ellis arrived, there were Lydia and her father and Ellis and his mother. They all stood together in the photos, but they were separate at the same time. Each parent clearly doting on their ‘chosen’ child.
And then Lydia’s father was gone. A ca
r accident, Gabe remembered. From then on, it was only Lydia by herself, standing next to her mother and Ellis, so clearly separated from them by some invisible wall. Lydia also appeared extremely angry, and all of that anger was directed at one person. Ellis. The photos showed Ellis cradled in his new mother’s arms.
In almost every shot, Lydia was ignored. She stood off to the side in many, her gaze intent on one thing: her brother with her mom. Good god, even at Lydia’s own high school graduation, Ellis and his mom stood slightly apart from Lydia in the picture. She looked at the camera, but her expression was off. As though she knew she stood alone.
Ellis, on the other hand, looked adoringly at his sister. If her mom hadn’t noticed her lack of love for her brother, apparently neither had he. Gabe shook himself. Maybe he was being silly—reading much more into these pictures than was really there. But, the hair on the back of his neck stood on end, and he suddenly wanted to get to Pru.
He strode from the room and crossed the living room in a few strides, grabbing Zach as he went. They took the stairs at a run, and that’s when he heard it. The sound of glass breaking upstairs.
Gabe picked up speed.
He wasn't prepared for what he saw when he burst into the room. PJ and Lydia knelt on the floor over a broken picture frame. But what really hit him, was PJ's arms around Lydia as sobs wracked the other woman's body. PJ smiled and nodded toward the door, giving him a look that told him she had it under control.
He and Zach backed out of the room and went downstairs to wait for the women to join them. They came down an hour later as the last of the guests left. PJ and her team said their good-byes, and PJ gave Lydia a final hug on the front steps. In the morning, PJ and her team would go on to the next stop on the tour, resuming the schedule that had been interrupted two days before. Debra would take over for Lydia for the next few stops until she was ready to rejoin them on the tour.
***
Gabe was silent as he removed his clothing, before swiftly stripping PJ of hers. Even though he’d been wrong about Lydia, he hadn’t fully recovered from the icy fear that had raced through his veins when he’d thought Lydia might be the real person trying to hurt PJ. His hands had shaken, and his heart had pounded when he thought she was in danger.