by Lora Leigh
Amelia covered her mouth, her fingers shaking nearly as fiercely as her lips as she fought to hold back her tears. Beside her, Anna plopped back into her seat, her arms crossing over her breasts as she glared back at the officers on stage mutinously.
Looking around the room, Amelia didn’t miss the members’ unwillingness to meet her gaze. This was a battle she couldn’t have won, no matter the argument used. She would have warned her friend of that, if she had known Anna would argue so fiercely in her defense.
“The auxiliary by-laws demand that all work done in its name and all contacts or efforts made under the committee’s direction belong to it,” Linda stated, her voice soft, the earlier aggression lost beneath a saddened weariness. “The officers of the committee are willing to sign an addendum that should you turn over this year’s plans and notes and do what you can to aid a seamless transition; then we’ll acknowledge your right to use the knowledge you’ve built over the years should it be required to employ yourself. We never wanted to hurt you, Amelia. And I personally never felt any animosity toward you, though I admit I have a great and overriding animosity for the situation itself.” Her expression firmed then. “But neither do any of us want to be hurt because of you.”
Amelia glanced around the room once again before lowering her head for long moments.
Each woman in this room had, at one time or another, come to her for help because of Wayne. None of them was stupid; they had known the price she would pay each time they asked for her help. But they had asked anyway.
The bruises, broken bones, and years of humiliations inflicted by Wayne meant little in the face of their personal safety. She couldn’t blame them for that.
She’d told herself that should she ever need any of them, then they would stand behind her. That Wayne had been wrong when he’d called her a fool for standing against him to help them.
“You’ll regret putting your neck in the noose every time they come whining to you,” Wayne stated somberly, regret threading his voice as she lay on the floor, fighting to breathe after he’d slammed his fist into her abdomen. He’d caught her off-guard and she’d sworn he had to have cracked a rib. “When will you learn, Amelia?” He hunched beside her to brush the hair back from her face as he stared down at her, his tone incredibly gentle. “They could be standing here, knowing the pain you’re feeling, and they’d still use you up. They would still ask you to risk yourself because they’re such fucking cowards that they can’t risk themselves or accept the reprisals for the choices they’ve made.”
Each one of these women owed her.
But they couldn’t do anything if the reverend whose daughter had been murdered by Wayne protested Amelia’s involvement in the socials by asking his congregation to ignore the county’s varied ways of rewarding participation or punishing absence.
They couldn’t stop the newspaper articles that mentioned her involvement with the county’s events, and they couldn’t stop the protests by citizens or residents unaware of how often or how hard Amelia had worked for them in her position as Wayne’s assistant.
“Don’t you dare give in to them, Amelia,” Anna hissed at her side. “They knew they could play your conscience.”
But they were right. Amelia hated acknowledging it, but it stared her in the face through the eyes of the women who accidentally met her gaze.
She nodded slowly, ignoring Anna’s muttered curse beside her.
“Get the release prepared,” she told Linda wearily as she gripped the hand of the case she’d brought with her. “Once it’s prepared you can email me the agreement for my lawyer to go over before I sign it.”
Turning, she moved around Anna’s chair, preparing to leave.
“Amelia.” Ruth Anne’s gentle voice had Amelia shaking her head fiercely as she hurried from the meeting room, all but running in her haste to get away from them.
She had to get out of there before she lost control of the tears gathering in her eyes and the sobs tightening her chest.
She couldn’t allow herself to cry in front of them. She wouldn’t allow herself to do it.
Once she reached her car, the tears and the sobs escaped.
Locking the doors, Amelia laid her head against the steering wheel. As alone as she had ever been, she lost control of the agony ripping through her heart.
Even as her tears fell, the sobs jerking through her body, she knew none of it would help. It would never matter how many tears she shed; it could never replace everything Wayne’s evil had cost her.
It could never replace her soul.
* * *
The meeting with the project developers and directors for the proposed Avalanche Resort was running far longer than Crowe had anticipated. So much so that when Ivan Resnova’s cell phone interrupted the latest project report, he was actually thankful and a bit curious.
“One moment, gentlemen,” Ivan requested as he glanced at the caller ID before accepting the call with a brief, “Yes?”
A heavy frown pulled at Ivan’s brow as he listened for long moments.
“Were there protests?” he asked, piquing Crowe’s curiosity further before amplifying it long moments later with the order, “Make a list of those names, please, and I’ll ensure the matter is looked into.”
Ivan paused again.
“No worries,” he said after listening several more seconds. “It will be taken care of.”
The call was disconnected before Ivan turned slowly toward the project developers.
“Gentlemen,” he requested. “I need a moment alone with the sheriff and Crowe. If you don’t mind?”
It took only moments to clear the room. As the conference room door closed, Ivan’s gaze met Archer’s, then Crowe’s.
“I have a friend on the ladies’ auxiliary,” he informed them. “It would seem a secretive vote went through to remove Amelia as social coordinator. Amelia was, it appears, rather guilted into agreeing to follow the vote and step down.” He turned to Archer. “Anna bullied six very disapproving officers, demanded the position herself, then forced an immediate vote and walked away with the position herself. As she left, she informed the committee she was actually too busy planning a wedding to deal with such details, but would ensure she chose a co-coordinator, as the auxiliary guidelines allow, with enough experience to handle the job.”
Crowe rose slowly from his chair, the memory of Linda and Ruth Anne’s visit two days before suddenly making sense.
“Where’s Amelia?” he growled, anger building at the thought of what had been taken from her.
“She returned home, I was told,” Ivan sighed. “My contact attempted to call her, but it appears she’s not answering her phone.”
Crowe didn’t wait to hear more. Snarling an obscenity, he turned and stalked from the room, then strode past the gathered project directors without a word.
Son of a bitch. He was growing sick of strikes against Amelia. And he was fucking sick and tired of watching her pay for crimes she had no part in.
It was time to put a stop to it.
CHAPTER 9
Taken.
She was no longer Amelia Sorenson, social and event planning coordinator. She was just Amelia Sorenson, Wayne Sorenson-slash-the-Slasher’s daughter.
The first title had been taken from her. Too bad the second couldn’t be. She would have gladly let them have that one.
She had depended on that position to keep herself busy, to ensure she had a life. To be able to enjoy what was left of her life.
She stared around the room she had taken as her office, her gaze touching on the sketches she’d made for the various themed weekends, suggestions for costumes sketched in various degrees of detail.
Then there were the sketches for decorations in the city square. The lights and themed entertainments and activities carefully detailed. Moving to the large whiteboard she’d placed on a stand in the center of the room, Amelia gazed at the intricately detailed schedule of events, entertainments, and performers for the season.
Beside the whiteboard were the colored sketches for each weekend with the entire square represented first. Behind the main sketch were several others of each grotto’s decoration, the band gazebos, as well as the dance square.
Brightly colored lights surrounded the music gazebo and surrounding bricked dance area. The gardens, trees, and flowering bushes that grew around the dance area would be decorated with multihued lights and gossamer wings peeking from the leaves.
Wings also flared from the backs of two white horses drawing a white carriage decorated with flickering candlelight and sheer veils draped around a pure white upholstered bench seat.
The Fairy Ball.
The summer she turned eighteen, an attempt at a fairy-themed weekend had been made. Amelia had watched from her father’s office as the decorations had been put up that week, and she had filed away her own ideas, determined that one day she would coordinate the socials—and once she did, she would have her own fairy theme.
This year she had planned her fairy theme.
Reaching out, she traced the gossamer wings of the fairy maiden moving onto the dance floor to accept the hand of the dark fairy prince who awaited her.
Delicate and bold, the fairy maiden looked up at the dark prince from the corner of her eyes as though considering the hand he held out to her.
The fairy was dressed in golds, russets, and soft browns. The sheer chiffon and tulle of the flowing dress made the maiden appear more delicate, while the wings rising from her back gave her the appearance of floating above the bricks she would have stepped to.
The dress Amelia had nearly completed for herself, wings and all, waited in one of the spare bedrooms in the downstairs guest wing of the house. The dress she wouldn’t have a chance to wear now. Breathing out wearily, she lifted the whiteboard from its stand before storing it in the closet across the room. Returning and gathering the various theme boards from the larger easel, she carried them to the closet as well and closed the door on the sight of them.
There were notebooks of carefully detailed plans, sketches, and proposed themes. Contracts with various bands, a comic, three children’s entertainment agencies, and even a fairy clown were already signed.
There were volunteer lists, notes made from years of planning and scheduling, and more notebooks of even more detailed lists that her mother had left from the years she had coordinated the social weekends.
There were lists of those who most enjoyed working with the younger children. Lists of the best cooks and their best dishes. Observations of the entertainment best suited and preferred by the children, the bands that drew the largest crowds, the themes most asked for, most preferred, and those that were the best value with accompanying prices broken down to the last penny.
She was stacking the notebooks in the totes she had taken them from when the office door opened slowly.
Stilling, Amelia drew in a deep, hard breath before turning hesitantly to face the man she’d drawn as the dark prince.
Savage.
He was the descendant of that first Irish Baron and a Native American princess, the only daughter of a great chief and dearly loved by not just her father, but all her people.
His hard features reflected the proud, independent, strong-willed ancestors he’d sprung from. A throwback, Amelia’s mother had called him, even more so than his father.
So strong he had survived a lifetime of evil perpetuated by the man that claimed to be her father.
“You once told me any relationship with me would never work because my father so hated you,” she now stated bitterly, remembering the letter she had found on her bed the night he had destroyed her life. “Tell me, Crowe, what will you tell everyone who questions why you’re screwing a serial killer’s daughter? Especially the daughter of the serial killer who murdered every member of your family except your sister and first cousins? How will you excuse that betrayal to every Callahan he murdered?”
That question had tormented her in the six weeks he’d been gone. Lying in the dark, staring into dim light of the moon outside her balcony doors, she’d tried to imagine an excuse that would work.
She hadn’t found one.
“I stopped paying attention to demands a hell of a long time ago, Amelia.” Broad shoulders shrugged negligently as he hooked his thumbs in his belt loops and watched her somberly. “And if I were to decide to answer such an asinine question I guess I’d just have to tell the truth.”
The truth? That he was using her to draw out that killer? Or that he was determined to punish the only person he could link to that killer?
“The truth,” she murmured. “That answer could get interesting.”
“Hell, we’re having sex, not making babies. Right?” he growled before adding, “I doesn’t matter who contributed his sperm to your creation, or whose DNA may be part of you. All that matters is the woman you are. And that woman bears no resemblance in any way, shape, or form to a killer.”
Her lips curled mockingly. “That really doesn’t matter to most people, Crowe. What does matter to them, though? That every appearance of disassociating themselves be maintained. The child might be innocent, but the parent isn’t, so of course the child must be guilty as well. Right?”
She wasn’t going to confront the first part of that question.
“You know better than that.” He breathed out roughly, standing still, almost motionless as he watched her with a hint of wariness. “Come on, Amelia, I don’t give a damn what they think. Neither should you.”
Should she know better than that? What they thought had just taken away all the joy her life had contained in the past seven years.
“Evidently I don’t know anything,” The retort sounded much angrier than she felt. She was simply too damned tired to work up the amount of rage it would take to match her voice. “Why are you even here? Haven’t you figured out yet that Wayne doesn’t care what we’re doing as long as one of us is being punished?”
When Crowe had left that summer, seven years before, she remembered the dark silence that had seemed to fill Wayne until he’d learned of Amelia’s interest in Crowe a year later. Thank God he’d never learned the full truth of their relationship. She’d been punished enough just for that “interest.”
God, Amelia should have known. How had she not suspected what he was or the evil he possessed?
“Then we stop allowing the punishments,” he decided.
She stared back at him, bemused. She knew Crowe, and she knew he didn’t buy into such naive psychobabble.
“And you propose to stop it, how?” she asked, mocking the statement as she crossed her arms over her breasts defensively. “Let’s see, perhaps I should just inform the auxiliary they can vote me out every day of the week if they want, but I’m tired of being punished so I’m just going to ignore it. When they call Archer to force me out of the meetings, I’ll just ignore him as well. But tell me.” Tilting her head to the side questioningly, she gave him a hard, bitter look. “How do I ignore that tiny cell he’ll lock me in?”
A dark chuckle rasped from his chest. The sound of it was far too sexy for her peace of mind.
And why the hell did she even care how sexy it sounded?
“The imagery is amusing, fairy-girl, but hardly what I meant and I think you know it.”
This time she was the one who shrugged as though she simply didn’t give a damn.
“There’s no way I can ignore the facts of life at the moment, either, Crowe.” Dropping her arms, she stared around her office as regret beat at her soul with bruising force. “Wayne’s not here to punish; neither is Amory Wyatt. That just leaves me. And they’ll make sure there’s no escaping the fact that I’m being punished.”
And she was sick of it.
Fury lashed at her senses as she fought to beat it back, fought to do as she had always done in the past when faced with the unfairness of the choices she’d had to make.
“So you’re just going to lie down and accept their blows like you were f
orced to accept Wayne’s?”
Amelia stared back at him silently as the question hung in the air between them, the implications racing through her mind. He smiled knowingly.
She clasped her hands before her, patiently linking her fingers together as she considered the best way to answer.
He chuckled in amusement, shaking his head. “Considering which lie to tell me?” An arrogant brow arched with mocking emphasis.
“Or trying to figure out what the hell you’re talking about,” she scoffed, watching him warily.
There was really no way he could know or even suspect the truth where Wayne’s abuse was concerned, was there?
“Lying, little sugar elf? When did you pick up that nasty little habit?”
She’d picked up that nasty little habit to protect his sexy tight ass, she thought in exasperation. After that, it had become her means of survival.
“Lying about what?” Just what she needed, Crowe possibly knowing more than he should.
He shook his head slowly, a low sound leaving his lips. “Now, Amelia, let’s be honest here. Do you think I’ve not heard all the nasty little rumors running around since we identified Wayne as the Slasher?”
How had, or could, anyone have known to gossip about it? Surely he was just trying to bait her, to force the truth from her some way.