by Lori Ryan
She was right.
“On the last night of the retreat,” Callie began.
“We’ll play Sutton Capital Showdown,” said Bethany.
“Sutton Capital Showdown?” Kaeden echoed trying to wrap his head around what that shit show would entail.
Bethany grinned, still bouncing. “You help us come up with a bunch of questions about the people you work with.”
“Yeah,” said Callie, “like, if so and so had a stuffed animal named Choo Choo or whatever when they were little, or someone makes banana bread every Sunday. Little things about each of them. Then we set it up where there are teams and it’s like a trivia night battle.”
The smile on Joy’s face was wide and taunting. “Sounds like fun, Kaeden. Don’t you think?”
He didn’t think, but it did sound exactly like the kind of thing Jack would want for this trip.
So he could suck it up. Besides, it’s not like he had to play the game. In fact, he could be the referee. It gave him the perfect excuse to sit it out.
“Great.” He offered what he hoped was an encouraging smile. It probably wasn’t, but it was the best he had. “I want you guys to head this up. Take it and run with it.”
There. Problem solved. Jack would would be happy with this, and really, if the game ended up being a little lame, that was to be expected for things like this, right?
“Perfect,” Callie said. “We just need to interview you about your coworkers.”
Oh hell.
He shot a glance at Joy. “You’re having too much fun with this.”
She shook her head, one hand casually trying to smother a smile on her face. “Not at all.”
Even though he was shaking his head at her, he was smiling. Damn her.
“You know who would be perfect for this,” Joy said, switching her attention to the other women in the room. “Samantha will have more dirt on her coworkers than anyone.”
“I hardly think we need a hacker for this,” Kaeden said, though really, he didn’t know why he was fighting it. Anything to get himself off the hook.
Now Joy was looking at him like he’d lost his mind. “No, they don’t need a hacker. Sam knows everything there is to know about everyone.” Her look was pointed. “She talks to people. She pays attention. She hears them.”
“Ouch. Low blow.”
Her grin was unrepentant.
Kaeden kept his eyes on Joy as Bethany and Callie left to go find Samantha.
A glance at the windows and door told him there was no one else around. He put a hand to her hip and pulled her in, liking the way she felt so damned perfect against him a little too much.
“You’re laughing at me.”
She tilted her head up to meet his gaze, her own filled with amusement. “A little.”
“Damn woman.”
He liked the way her smile widened and her eyes danced as she laughed at him. And he liked the way she gasped when he closed his mouth over hers, capturing that laugh with his kiss.
Liked the way she leaned in closer, pressing her body to his as she met his kiss and seemed to ask for more.
Liked it all too damned much.
Chapter 20
Kaeden sat on one of the large logs that ran along the stream and watched as his coworkers helped their kids scoop dirt from the bottom of the stream and pan for gold.
They had spent the morning touring an old mining site and then each person got a pan to swish the silt in, hunting for flakes of gold or garnet.
The kids squealed each time they found a piece, and when you put those pieces into one of the magnifying tubes used to hold the flecks, they looked much bigger and more impressive to little eyes.
He had to admit, he liked it here. And he didn’t even mind being forced to spend all this time with his team and the others at Sutton. He had to admit, he liked the people he worked with. As much as he didn’t want to.
But if he did form friendships with them, would they last? Would they stand a test like the one he’d seen even most of his military brothers and sisters crumple under?
He wouldn’t get his hopes up. He’d seen what happened when shit hit the fan and people had to choose sides. They chose the side that covered their asses or didn’t rock the boat.
He pulled the list he’d been making from his back pocket. It turned out, he knew more about his coworkers than he thought. Bethany and Callie were getting good details from Sam for the Sutton Capital Showdown game, but it bothered him that he hadn’t been able to help more.
But he’d come up with ten or so things he thought would be fun details to add. He remembered Jennie had a dog named Monkey when she was little. She’d cried in the parking lot of the humane society until her parents let her adopt him. Unfortunately, they let her name him, too, and ended up with a dog named Monkey.
And Chad’s nickname was Gilligan when he was in basic training because he got lost the first time out in the field.
He wondered if anyone knew Jack and Chad were grounded when they were kids for starting a fire in the backyard that ended up taking out the back quarter of Chad’s backyard before the fire department got it under control.
Chad lowered himself onto the boulder next to Kaeden and stared off at the river in the direction Kaeden was looking.
Kaeden was surprised to see Chad this far away from the action since his wife and kid were down there where all the fun was happening with the gold. Kaeden had purposefully kept himself out of the fray.
“You get her story out of her yet?” Chad asked, surprising Kaeden again.
Kaeden didn’t need to follow the other man’s line of sight to see who he was looking at. He had been uber aware of where Joy was since they got to the river. She was down there laughing and splashing with the rest of them and it did stupid things to his chest to see her relaxing like that. Like she didn’t have too many of the world’s cares piled on her shoulders.
And yeah, he knew something was going on with her. Knew she wasn’t telling them something.
Still, he weighed whether he should talk about it with Chad.
Chad was the company’s head of security but he was also a former Army Ranger and Kaeden knew the man had been considered a hero for some of his actions overseas.
A hero. Kaeden had long ago learned those didn’t exist. That when you got down under the skin and saw the person for who they really were, there could be a whole hell of a lot of darkness under there.
Chad apparently didn’t care if Kaeden was going to answer. “I mean, you get that she’s not who she says she is, right? But she seems like she’s a good person. So I gotta figure maybe she’s in trouble and needs our help?”
Kaeden didn’t like the way a hot streak of jealousy fired through him at the way Chad was talking about helping Joy. He should be glad for her to get help. And more, he should be glad if someone else was willing to step up to do it. If he could step back and let someone else play hero this time.
But that wasn’t the way he was wired. He had been telling himself he could walk away from a woman who needed help, but he knew that was bullshit. Not only that, but he didn’t want to watch while someone else tried to help Joy. He wanted to be the one to save her. “She tells me she just likes to move around.”
Chad snorted. “Yeah, and I’m the tooth fairy.”
Kaeden couldn’t help the grin that crossed his face at that image. Chad was a large man, to put it mildly. The scar that ran down one side of his face would look great framed by a tiara and glitter.
“Please tell me you play tea party with your daughter,” Kaeden said.
Chad laughed. “Of course I do. That girl is a slave driver. I even have to balance in the little chair because—” he affected the small high voice of a little girl— “tea is properly served at a table not on the couch.”
Kaeden could see that Chad loved his daughter. He wondered if that love would be enough to keep the man from disappointing her someday.
Chad stood. “When you find out what’s going on w
ith her, if you need help, grab me or Logan or Jack. We’ve got your back on this.”
Kaeden didn’t let his shock at the offer show. He also didn’t let the man’s words get his hopes up. Words were easy. Actions were another thing altogether.
As Chad walked away, Kaeden’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out to see a text from his friend at Commfarm.
No Joy Wilson, but had a Jane Walker who sounds like the woman you described. My girlfriend was in the same department as her and they were good friends. She went on leave to help her mom after a car accident but never came back.
A minute later another text came through. This one was a photo of two women.
He didn’t need to blow up the image to see that one of them was Joy. Yeah, she was looking a lot happier and carefree in the image. The women were at a restaurant and they’d leaned together, putting their arms around each other.
She looked fresh faced, the way someone who hadn’t seen all the shit life could throw at you had.
He looked across the way at her and, even though she was laughing and smiling, he could see that had changed. She knew now what the world had to offer and he was surer now than ever that whatever the world had thrown at her, it hadn’t been good.
He thought back to their exchanges. She never flinched around him or jumped at his closeness, so he didn’t think she’d been abused.
There was still that wariness, though, that said she expected whatever it was that was haunting her to show up. And he had a feeling that whatever it was she was afraid of wouldn’t have her so spooked if there wasn’t some real threat.
He just needed to find out what that threat was.
He looked back to the stream, but Joy was no longer there. He scanned the area to see where she’d gone only to see her running toward the parking lot. He stood, his heart kicking up to double time. Why would she be running?
Chapter 21
Joy hadn’t really thought about how much fun the gold mining tour would be for her when she recommended it. She’d heard it was a lot of fun for families and it wasn’t like these people were her family. Or even her friends.
That didn’t matter though when the kids all started pushing gold pans into her hands and telling her to “shake the gold out.”
It didn’t take much more than a sliver of gold or the dark red of the garnet to get them excited. And pretty soon, they were calling any remotely shiny pebble a diamond and asking to put it into their collection tube. They had cracked her up with that.
She left the group at the water’s edge to go back to the parking area to use the bathroom when she saw it and her blood felt like ice in a single beat.
She heard the shouting at the same time.
“Where is Nicholas?” “Where is he?”
The young boy was running flat out right for the parking lot.
She ran toward him, knowing she was probably about to scare the boy half to death, but not knowing if one of his parents was around or not. She knew Jill and Andrew had his twin brother and an infant to keep their eyes on so maybe he’d slipped away.
When she saw a car backing out of a spot, she didn’t hesitate. She kicked it into high gear and ran full on at the boy.
She was probably too rough, but she just grabbed for him and kept moving, trying to get out of the path of the car. The car slammed to a stop, the driver seemingly having seen the movement of her rushing across its back end.
She tripped then and twisted in the air, one hand going to cover the screaming boy’s head as she tucked him against her body and fell onto her back on the gravel.
It hurt. A lot.
It also knocked the wind completely from her lungs and she couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t seem to move her frozen lungs.
Then there were noises around her and someone was taking the boy from her and soothing him. She could hear all the “oh my Gods,” and “thank God she saw hims” and there were people talking to her, but the muscles of her chest were paralyzed.
“Breathe out Joy.” It was Kaeden and he was rubbing his hands down her arms and talking to her through all the noise around them, his voice steady and calm in the din. “I know you want to breathe in. Your body thinks it needs to breathe in to fix this, but you need to push the air out to kickstart your lungs.”
She did what he said even though she didn’t think she had any air in her lungs to push out.
Her breathing started up as soon as she did and she gulped air in, feeling lightheaded. And sore.
“Better?” he asked.
“Yes.” She moved a hand to the back of her head. She was going to have a bump for sure.
Andrew crouched next to her and tugged a leaf from her hair. “I don’t know how to even begin to say thank you for that, Joy. He got away from me and when I saw where he was, I was too far to get to him.”
“We all were,” Kaeden said.
Jill came over next, still holding the little boy, bouncing him in her arms. “Thank you so much Joy. I can’t believe how badly that could have gone.” She was crying and looked well and truly shook up. “Saying thank you doesn’t seem like enough, but my mind is too frantic to think of anything else to say.”
Joy saw Kelly and Jack talking to the people who had been driving the car. They looked pretty shook too. They all were, she guessed, including her.
She met Jill’s eyes. “It’s okay. I’m just glad I was there.”
The whole Sutton group was coming over and she hated being at the center of everyone’s attention. She pushed to her feet, brushing herself off as Kaeden pulled a few more leaves from her hair.
Her heart was still hammering when she turned to him, ducking her head to avoid everyone’s stares. “Can you sit in the van with me while everyone finishes up? I think I need to sit down.”
He nodded and when he’d gotten her to the van he got a cold pack from the first aid kit and handed it to her for her head.
“Let me take a look at your head,” he said, leaning to see the back of her head.
The move brought him close to her. Way too close. She could smell the clean woodsy scent of him and feel the heat coming off his body.
She felt her breath start to quicken and closed her eyes.
But then he was prodding the back of her head and even though he was being gentle, it hurt.
“Sorry.” He came back and sat in front of her, putting the cold pack to her head. “It doesn’t look too bad. There’s no blood.”
“I’m sure it will be fine,” she said, wanting to downplay it. Her back felt like it was bruised and might even have some scrapes from the gravel. “Is the boy okay? That was Nicholas, right?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I’m not sure. Could have been Mark. They look the same to me.”
She laughed. It was true. Both boys had beautiful big curls and a creamy colored light brown skin with big green eyes. Although if she was remembering right, Nicholas was the one who was a lot more likely to run away from the group like that. Mark seemed to stay glued to his mom’s side.
The van door opened and Bethany and Callie poked their heads inside.
“We heard what happened,” Bethany said. “That was incredible.”
“We should tell the newspaper,” Callie said excitedly. “They could do a human-interest story on it. You could be famous.”
Joy’s stomach pitched at the mention of that kind of attention. She shook her head, getting even sicker with the motion, but not caring.
“No,” was all she got out.
Kaeden took over. “We’re not calling the newspaper. None of us wants that kind of interruption to the retreat,” he said and Joy felt a little bad that he was sounding so stern with the young women.
“Oh,” they said in near unison.
“I guess not,” Bethany said, looking at Callie.
Joy started to panic. If the girls ignored him, things could go very badly for her. All she could think was if someone got a video of that, it could be all over the place in a heartbeat.
> Surely not. It had happened so quickly and been over in seconds. There was no way anyone could get a phone out and open the camera.
Unless they were already filming.
Kaeden looked back at her and then back to the women. “I’m counting on you two to make sure no one gets any ideas about making this public.”
They nodded in unison, solemn now, and then murmured apologies as they closed the van door.
Joy pulled the ice pack off her head. “Thank you. Sorry about that. I just don’t like attention.”
He nodded and sat back down next to her. “I get it.”
She hoped not. She knew he was already suspicious of her and she’d probably just made more of that than a normal person would have, but she didn’t want to take a chance on her picture being put online or anything.
God what she wouldn’t give to have a normal life again.
“You feeling up to coming on the hike this afternoon?”
She had to admit, she wanted to go. She fought a smile. “Sure. I’ll be there.”
What she really wanted to do was jump up and says yes and ask if he’d hold her hand. Okay, not really, but that was the feeling she got at his question. That kind of excited bouncy feeling in your belly that you got back in high school when the boy you had a crush on talked to you in the hall.
He stretched his legs out into the center aisle of the van. “So are all our activities keeping you from other things this week? Or someone else you usually hang out with?”
She shook her head. Her heart shouldn’t be kicking into gear at the fact he seemed to be hinting around for any news of a boyfriend. Surely he had to know she wouldn’t have slept with him if she was involved with someone else.
But maybe he didn’t know that. Maybe that was what she sensed in his past. Maybe a girlfriend who cheated on him and taught him this utter lack of trust.
No, the way he was about holding himself at arm’s length with people couldn’t come simply from a bad breakup or a cheating woman. This was more.
She was going back and forth on whether to ask him about it. It’s not like she was willing to share her story. Why ask for his and open up that argument again?