SEALed With Love (DiCarlo Brides book 2) (The DiCarlo Brides)

by Heather Tullis

  She looked again at the engaged couple and felt a little of the tightness loosen. She had only known her half-sisters for a few months, but she and Cami had spent a lot of time together since they moved into the house in early July. Sage had spent the summer watching Cami’s somewhat rocky relationship with Vince through crazy media troubles and misunderstandings. Good news helped soothe the stress caused by recent events—which included the unwelcome delivery to her desk that morning.

  Lana handed Sage a flute of champagne. “I know you don’t really drink, but I figured you could at least toast with us.”

  Sage forced herself to think about what was going on around her instead of who might be watching the house from the shadowy tree line. “I make exceptions for special occasions.”

  Blake led the toast, and everyone followed with one of their own. Though she only took a tiny sip each time, Sage’s glass was nearly empty when they finished the rounds. With the six sisters, Vince, Blake and Joel there, the list of toasts was long.

  She set aside her glass when she’d emptied it and moved closer to Joel. Maybe if she were in arm’s reach of him, he would stop looking at the doors and windows like a soldier expecting an attack at any moment.

  “Hey, what’s with the frown? It’s a happy day. We all survived yesterday’s fiasco, and Cami’s bubbling over with happiness.” Rosemary interrupted Sage’s move across the room. “What’s not to be happy about? Unless you wish Harrison had been invited.”

  Rosemary and Harrison had an adversarial relationship Sage didn’t really understand—she’d felt the attraction between them the moment they met—eleven years earlier—but they’d been at each other’s throats in the next moment and meeting again as adults hadn’t been better. Sage wasn’t about to ask questions, though; she already had enough problems on her plate. “I hadn’t thought about Harrison. And if Vince didn’t invite his family or friends, I don’t know why we would have called my brother.” He would blow a gasket when he found out about the stalker. She could already hear the irate big-brother attitude. And she wouldn’t be able to hide it now. Joel wouldn’t let her.

  Rosemary started talking about the cake she was going to make for Cami’s wedding and Sage tuned her out, becoming very aware of Joel, who closed the distance between them, coming to a stop on her left. Disapproval rolled off him, or maybe that was her imagination. She glanced at him again and saw the deep line between his brows, the way his arms crossed over his wide chest, muscles bunching. Even his shaved head and goatee seemed to disapprove of her decision to wait until tomorrow morning to tell the others.

  “You don’t have to hover, you know,” she hissed at him.

  “It’s my job,” he said, his expression not changing.

  And didn’t that describe exactly what was wrong with their relationship in the first place? He got paid to be there—he wasn’t spending time with her because he wanted to, but because he wanted the paycheck. That had been fine at first, but since her feelings for him had grown over the summer it was not nearly enough anymore.

  Joel hung around until the other guys left and many of the sisters wandered off to their rooms. “Let me see you out,” Sage said when she’d had enough of Joel’s silent presence. Any other time she would have enjoyed having him around. She ought to have been glad he was staying close—the stalker was back and Joel made her feel safe, usually. However, tonight his hovering and disapproval tired her, and made her even more jumpy than before.

  He glared, but with a glance at Delphi and Jonquil, who were still nearby, he rose and followed Sage to the door. He turned before opening it and she reached around him, opened the door and pushed him onto the porch, following him out—the open floor plan of the great room, dining and kitchen areas didn’t lend itself to privacy. Before she shut the door behind her, Sage heard Delphi whisper something low. She was well aware her sisters thought there was something romantic between herself and Joel. That illusion would be stripped away in the morning. In some ways, that would be a relief, as hearing the little teases only made her feel worse about his indifference to her on a romantic level.

  “You shouldn’t come out here.” His SEAL-trained eyes darted around the yard, looking for signs of an intruder in the darkness. He looked to the side and tensed for a moment, then relaxed a little when Sage’s orange tabby cat, Mr. Sunshine, sashayed out of the woods, headed for the house.

  “There’s nothing to suggest he’s turned violent. And you’re here, so my danger is minimal.” She didn’t fully believe her words. Though she tried to tell herself she was safe, there was no question that she had nightmares about being attacked.

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Because any decision you don’t agree with is automatically stupid. Is that it?”

  “I never said that.”

  She sighed, pushing her dark curls away from her face. “No, of course not. But you imply it with every look and action.”

  His jaw clenched and his brown eyes darkened. “I’m not letting you take unnecessary risks. I made a promise to your father.”

  “Right. And even from his grave, he makes sure we all dance to his tune.” A familiar ache rose in her chest at the thought. “Look, I’m going back inside. I’ll make sure I flip the locks. I’ll close the blinds, double check every door and window lock, then shut myself in my room for the night. You can even watch me on the cameras you installed in the house. Is that good enough?”

  “Not nearly, but it’ll have to do. I’ll pick you up for work tomorrow, and we’ll discuss all of this in more detail. I’ll take a look around the grounds before I leave.” He lived next door, only a thirty-second sprint from her place on the quiet cul-de-sac, but the distance seemed to make him nervous.

  “Terrific. You do that. See you tomorrow.” She turned and reentered the house, locking up behind her. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate his thoroughness—she counted on it, but getting his concern without his love wasn’t enough. Sage made the rounds of the doors and windows as she always did at night, and her sisters—if they noticed—kept their comments to themselves. As they always did. She wondered how paranoid they thought she was, and when they learned the truth, would they agree with Joel that it wasn’t enough?

  The DiCarlo Resort and Spa in Juniper Ridge, Colorado had held its opening gala only the previous weekend, but after spending part of the summer working together to get everything set up, the six sisters and the other staff had already fallen into a rhythm—something Sage appreciated when her head wasn’t fully in the game.

  After Joel pulled his Range Rover into staff parking at the hotel the next morning, he came around and opened Sage’s door. He had insisted on driving her everywhere from now on. “I’ll start with a sweep for bugs in your office, and work my way into the rest of the hotel during your staff meeting. Then I’ll come back to walk you to the executive meeting.”

  “I don’t think I need an escort down the hall.” She noticed that he matched his stride to her—considerably shorter—one.

  “That’s for me to decide. We’ll have to discuss what other measures to take to ensure your safety while we track down this guy.” Joel’s eyes darted around the grounds and into the hotel foyer before he pulled the front door open for her.

  Sage thought she ought to be annoyed, but she was still freaked out over the flowers. He—whoever he was—never made deliveries or left any clues about who he was. The plethora of cameras that had been installed throughout the hotel would have caught his image if he’d done so. It would be nice to know who her stalker was, and thus far they were clueless.

  Sage unlocked the spa, checked the schedule and popped onto her email while Joel did his twice-weekly sweep for bugs. As her staff started to trickle in, she double-checked the treatment rooms. “Hey, Damon,” she greeted the well-muscled masseur as he joined her at the computer terminal to see his day’s schedule. “Looks like we still have a few openings here and there. Hopefully most of them will fill in.”

  “I’m sur
e they will. And if not, it might be a welcome break after this weekend.” He headed off to prepare his treatment room.

  The whole staff had worked nearly every day since the hotel’s opening. By day seven most of them had managed a day off, but Sage didn’t see one for herself until next week. Though she’d had almost a month to get to know her staff while they trained together, she still hadn’t picked an assistant manager. She finally thought she was getting closer to making the decision.

  She waved Joel off, then did a quick hygiene check on the treatment rooms before assembling her staff for their daily meeting.

  Sage felt a familiar itch between her shoulder blades—the one that had gone away when she moved to Colorado. Now the stalker was here, she knew she’d be looking over her shoulder at every turn again. She rubbed her neck and opened the meeting. Unfortunately, life didn’t stop for crazy stalkers.

  “So, any security concerns we need to be aware of?” Lana asked near the end of the executive meeting that morning. “You did request that we all be here.” They had already dismissed the head of housekeeping and engineering, leaving only family, Joel and Blake.

  Sage looked around at all of her sisters, her half-brother Harrison and Blake. She wondered what they would say when they found out about her secret.

  “Yes, we need everyone to be aware of a situation that has come up again.” Joel glanced at Sage, but his expression didn’t falter. “I know some of you heard about the anonymous flower delivery Sage received yesterday.”

  “A secret admirer. Did you figure out where they came from?” Jonquil asked, her eyes sparkling with interest. “It was all over the hotel in half an hour.”

  Joel scowled. “You act like it was some big romantic gesture, but the truth is, it was the first sign that Sage’s stalker has followed her here.”

  The room went as silent as the aftermath of a car accident. “What do you mean?” Cami asked.

  “Stalker? What are you talking about?” Harrison’s face grew red from anger, making Sage flinch. He’d always been overprotective. He turned to her. “How long has someone been stalking you?”

  Sage wet her lips and tried to pretend she wasn’t bothered by the whole situation, though when her voice quavered, she knew she hadn’t pulled it off. “In January I started getting emails from someone. He added letters and presents after a few weeks. They started slow and most were signed your future husband. He’s never approached me in person, and he never uses his name, so we’re not sure who it is. Though I’ve changed email addresses, he still contacted me periodically through social networks—which is why I’m no longer active on any.” Jonquil had been hassling her lately about rejoining some. “Until yesterday, I hadn’t heard anything from him since I moved here. I thought he’d given up.” Hoped was more like it, though she hadn’t dared believe it.

  “Which doesn’t mean he recently arrived in the area,” Joel clarified. “Just that he hadn’t come forward since the move. Some stalkers do follow their prey across country when they attempt to get away.”

  “And it was kind of hard to keep my whereabouts a secret, what with the news articles,” Sage said.

  Recognition dawned in Cami’s eyes. “That’s why you were freaked about the article on the Fourth of July.”

  “Yeah,” Sage admitted. Having her name and location in the paper had made her glad Joel was staying in the house next door, and that the holiday had given them a reason to be together all day.

  “Again, I ask why you never told me.” Harrison appeared thoroughly disgruntled, with his arms crossed over his chest and his brows drawn low over his eyes.

  “And have you go into full protection mode?” Sage asked. “I love you, Harrison, but you worry and smother, and you had your own concerns with the resort opening.” As head of personnel, he’d been more than busy dealing with new hires. She didn’t mention the pain her father’s pronouncements had caused him as well.

  “I don’t smother,” he protested.

  Thankfully Sage was saved from responding by a question from another direction. “What have you been doing to protect yourself?” This was Rosemary—a savvy city girl with a heart bigger than the state of Texas, and a streak of vulnerability as wide as the Mississippi river, though she covered it in ghetto attitude.

  The other sisters chimed in with a variation of anger and worry about her safety, but Joel held up a hand to calm the room.

  “George found out about it and brought me in to protect Sage,” Joel said. “I’ve been her private security guard since March, though keeping that from being obvious hasn’t always been easy. Now that I’ve got my hands full here with hotel security, and she has a full staff, it’s gotten even harder. I’m going to need everyone’s assistance and alertness.”

  “And what are you doing to find this guy?” Harrison asked.

  “I checked with the flower shop where he ordered the bouquet and I’m trying to track him back through his credit card.” Joel tapped his pen against the table. “In the past he’s used prepaid credit cards, the kind you can pick up at the store and refill as needed, so I haven’t been able to get information on him. He’s going to screw up soon, though. He has to.”

  Cami shook her head. “Okay, everything makes much more sense now. But why didn’t you tell us all this before?” She skewered Sage with her gaze. “We thought she was just freaky nuts about security when she checked all of the doors and windows every night. We could have been helping to keep an eye out and ensure the house is secure more than we have.”

  Sage shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I hadn’t heard from him in months. I’d hoped he’d given up and gone away.” She glanced around the table at the women who were technically her family, even if they were far from close. “Anyway, we don’t need to pound the topic to death. Now you’re all aware, Joel wants to make sure I don’t go anywhere alone—not even between the hotel and my car, or to the grocery store. He wants us to all be extra diligent about locks and security and to please let him know if there’s anyone out of place. Which should be so easy since we have six or seven hundred guests in the hotel on any given day, and hundreds of employees.”

  He glared at her. “That’s the basic idea. Though I wish you wouldn’t be flippant about it. We’re talking about your safety here.”

  “Can we move this along?” Sage hated being the center of attention, and Joel and Harrison weren’t the only ones giving her shrewd or angry looks.

  Lana’s lips thinned, but she nodded. “We all have duties to return to. Everyone keep an eye out, report anything suspicious to Joel, and we’ll discuss this more later.”

  Goody. Sage couldn’t wait.

  Joel watched Sage return back downstairs, Rosemary at her side, and wondered if he could have approached the situation differently. He didn’t regret telling everyone—if anything, he wished he’d done it back in their first meeting in May.

  “That’s quite an assignment,” Blake said, coming to stand beside Joel.

  “Yeah. Sage doesn’t always like taking the safe road.” Not that she sought out dangerous activities, but she could be more circumspect. It aggravated him to no end.

  “The DiCarlo girls can be pretty hard-headed,” Blake agreed.

  “Tell me about it,” Harrison said. “You should have said something before.”

  “I know. Sage has been fighting me about it. She wanted to keep it quiet, as if ignoring it would make the problem go away. I let it go when she didn’t have any contact from him, though I’ve been as diligent about her safety as ever. The perp’s definitely in the area now so everyone needs to be on the lookout.”

  “How serious is it?” Harrison looked frazzled and worry filled his eyes. “Has he threatened her, or is it just creepy and unnerving?”

  Joel turned to study Harrison. He’d gotten to know Sage’s older half-brother a little since they started looking at employees. Though Joel didn’t normally make friends easily, he’d extended himself in that direction on occasion, knowing Harrison wou
ld be concerned about his sister when the truth came out. Plus, he’d wanted to eliminate her brother as a harassment suspect. Getting to know him had helped Joel do that, making his job a little easier.

  News of George’s cancer had spread to the newspapers by the time her stalker started sending presents to her work and Joel hadn’t been willing to count anyone out until he could be sure they weren’t involved. Harrison was clean, as was Blake. “He followed her here. That’s pretty serious. The letters held an underlying threat—enough to take seriously, but not enough for the police to act on. These things can change quickly, though, and I don’t want to take any risks.”

  “All this time I thought you had a thing for Sage, but you were protecting her,” Blake said, eyeing Joel. His gaze was perceptive, as always. The man saw much more than the average guy. But two could play that game and Joel had made a few observations of his own.

  “Don’t worry; she’s still my full focus.” On every level, though he only acted in the role of bodyguard.

  Harrison’s brow furrowed, but he didn’t take his gaze off Joel. “You’ll keep me in the loop on Sage?”

  “If there’s anything concrete, I’ll keep everyone in the loop,” Joel said. “I’m not taking any chances.” Harrison would undoubtedly want more regular information than that, but Joel wouldn’t promise too much. Sage’s welfare was his first priority, and if she wanted her brother to know all of the details, she’d tell him herself. Now that her father was dead, Joel didn’t report to anyone.

  He headed to his office to check in on his staff. He’d already installed extra cameras on the girls’ house and in Sage’s office area, but it wasn’t enough. There was no way to work himself into her office space more often without causing speculation—especially as he didn’t understand the draw to hot rocks and facials. Deep massage and foot rubs, sure—he hadn’t gotten them often as a Navy SEAL, but he understood the attraction when you were a mass of knotted muscle—but not the other things. Thank goodness his office was right next to the spa so he wasn’t far.