The Way You Love Me

by Unknown

  Rio, his gaze intense, asked, “Is the impossibility the reason for the sleeplessness?”

  Shane stared. “You always see too much.”

  Rio came to his height of six-four, a scant quarter of an inch taller than Shane. The sheet fell heedless to the floor. “Keeps me from making the same mistakes as others.”

  This time Shane had no ready comeback. All three of them, Shane, Rio, and Blade, had various reasons for steering clear of serious relationships with women. Sierra had helped Blade overcome his fears. Shane had little hope for himself, and none for Rio. The man simply did not forget or forgive. “You know where to find me.”

  Not waiting for a response, Shane continued out the door and down the winding path that led to the front of the house. He paused by the driver’s door of one of the two black jeeps parked in front. He studied the darkened house for a moment. Inside Blade and Sierra were in bed, sleeping or not. His mouth curved into a smile. After all, it was their honeymoon. It hadn’t been easy for them, but here they were, and nothing this side of heaven could tear them apart.

  For some, happy endings were possible. For others there wasn’t a chance in hell. Getting into the jeep, Shane pulled off. For the first time he was seeing his lonely life ahead of him and not liking what he saw.

  A little after ten that morning Shane was leaving checkpoint five, the outer perimeter of Blade’s property on the beach, when his radio went off with two beeps. Yellow Alert. He’d been too restless to stay at the command center for more than an hour. He’d left and personally checked in with all of his men on patrol.

  He snatched the radio from his belt. “Talk.”

  “Checkpoint one. Three visitors without clearance. Dominique and Trent Masters. Joann Albright. They say Mr. Navarone expects them. Over.”

  At the mention of Paige’s mother’s name, Shane’s heart thumped. It annoyed the hell out of him. While he was assessing his reaction, his cell went off. One note. Blade. “Hold. Over,” Shane said into the radio, then answered the phone. “Shane.”

  “Shane, three guests are due to arrive this morning. Dominique and her husband, Trent, and Joann Albright,” Blade said.

  “They’re at checkpoint one, awaiting clearance.”

  “Sorry, I forgot to tell you last night.”

  “My fault,” Sierra said, then giggled.

  Blade’s laughter joined hers. He’d been doing that a lot lately, Shane thought. It was about time. Sierra had healed the tortured places in Blade’s soul. For that, she had Shane’s undying gratitude and allegiance.

  “Please let them through, then bring them to the house,” Blade finally said.

  “Done.” Shane disconnected the cell and spoke into the radio. “Let them pass.” As soon as the orders were given, Shane was moving. He had just enough time to meet them in front of the house. Blade had asked him to bring them, which meant he wanted Shane there as well.

  Dominique and Trent had been at the wedding and so had Mrs. Albright, flying in on the private jet of Daniel Falcon. She’d been one of the first to leave after the ceremony. Now she was back. The reason must be a good one to interrupt Blade and Sierra’s honeymoon, and why did Shane have the feeling that he wasn’t going to like hearing it?

  “I was told you could help me.”

  Shane prided himself on keeping his thoughts hidden; he did so now. He didn’t look at his employee and friend, Blade, or Rio, or Trent Masters, the man lightly holding the hand of the woman who had just spoken, Joann Albright.

  As soon as the introductions had been completed, Sierra and Dominique had left the room, but not before Sierra playfully told Shane she was armed. Then she winked and gave Blade a kiss. She’d done it more for Blade than Shane. Although getting better, Blade remained a bit skittish when she wasn’t in his sight. After almost losing her to two kidnappers, he had good reason. Especially for a woman he loved more than his life.

  Mrs. Albright took a seat beside Trent on the sofa in the great room, then fixed her gaze on Shane. “I was told you could help me,” she repeated.

  “In what way?” Shane asked. Through his work in army intelligence he’d learned never to volunteer information or make assumptions. Although Mrs. Albright might have seen him at Blade and Sierra’s wedding, Shane had seen her on two other occasions. All three times she had been obviously happy. Now lines radiated from her pursed lips, across her forehead. Her troubled eyes were light brown, unlike the startling gray of her daughter’s.

  Mrs. Albright’s hands clenched. Trent’s long arm immediately curved around her shoulders. She sent him a smile filled with love and affection. Sitting next to the six-foot man, she looked small, delicate like her daughter. “Keep my daughter, Paige, from making a horrible mistake.”

  Shane couldn’t prevent the barest flicker of his lashes, the clench in his gut. It wasn’t any consolation that only Blade and Rio would have detected the slip, but they had been looking at Mrs. Albright. At least he knew Blade was. You never knew about Rio. “Please continue.”

  “She’s seeing a man, Russell Crenshaw. They dated a couple of times when Paige was a freshman in college, then went their separate ways. However, he’s been calling on her regularly since her father’s death from a . . . stroke five months ago,” she said.

  Shane wasn’t surprised to hear the hesitation, see the loathing in Mrs. Albright’s face. In his capacity to protect Blade and now Sierra, Shane made it his business to know about everyone they were in close contact with. He’d read the official police report of how her husband had died, not the story she’d circulated to keep their children from finding out what an adulterous and distasteful man their father was. “You don’t approve?”

  Mrs. Albright’s eyes chilled. “No. Russell is after her money.”

  Anger whipped through Shane, but his expression remained impassive. “Have you spoken to your daughter?”

  Mrs. Albright visibly swallowed. “Since the death of her father we . . . we aren’t as close as we once were. His death devastated her. Russell’s father and Paige’s were business associates. Her father always wanted her and Russell to marry.”

  Shane could figure out the rest. “Seeing Russell is her way of honoring her father’s memory.”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Albright said, the one word full of disgust. “Russell was there initially to offer comfort, and now he’s ingratiated himself with Paige.”

  “Perhaps he really cares for her,” Shane said, wondering why the words left a bitter taste in his mouth.

  Fury flashed in Mrs. Albright’s eyes. For the briefest moment he recalled the fury in her daughter’s eyes, the reason. Only years of training kept him from twisting uncomfortably in his seat. “What he cares about is the five-million-dollar trust that will be turned over to Paige when she’s twenty-seven. That’s less than four months away.”

  Rage, hot and lethal, shot through Shane at the thought of any man using Paige. But he’d learned long ago that the world wasn’t always pretty or fair. Stuff happened. His job was to make sure it didn’t happen to those in his charge.

  “I can do a thorough background check on the man she’s seeing,” Shane suggested. Besides his silence, he owed Paige after his ill treatment of her. But he wasn’t getting in the middle of this. Perhaps Mrs. Albright was wrong. Sometimes parents overreacted.

  Mrs. Albright was shaking her head before he finished. “No, I want you to come to Atlanta. Russell is the epitome of an upstanding citizen on the outside. You might not find anything in your search.” She sent Trent a pleading look, then gave her attention back to Shane. “I heard how you helped find information when Sierra was kidnapped. Ruth and Daniel said you and Rio made the difference. I want you. Blade agreed. Please.”

  She’d pulled out the big guns. She’d used her connection to Trent Masters and his to his brother-in-law, Daniel Falcon, and to Blade Navarone to find a man with the expertise to investigate a man she believed wanted to use her daughter. Blade would let Shane make his own decision, but Daniel had helped a
s well when Sierra, his cousin, and Blade’s lover at the time, was kidnapped. There was nothing Daniel and Blade wouldn’t do for each other.

  “You can be my houseguest,” she said, pushing her point.

  She’d just derailed Shane’s suggestion to send Rio. He was as intelligent as they came, had the dangerous, compelling looks that turned women’s heads, but his eyes were colder than a blizzard.

  “Sierra suggested I could introduce you as the protégé or son of one of my old college roommates,” Mrs. Albright continued.

  Shane wasn’t surprised Sierra was in on this. She had a way of ferreting out information, then giving her opinion whether it was asked for or not. She’d made Blade whole again, and Shane would do almost anything for her.

  But not this.

  “We’d appreciate it and of course pay you whatever your fee is, but we know money is not the issue,” Trent said. “Sierra’s brother, Luke, could do some preliminary investigation from Santa Fe, but we know without asking that he won’t take a job that will keep him away from his wife.”

  Trent was on target. All the Graysons were the same love-struck way, and so were their extended family members and in-laws. Shane had never seen couples so committed and in love.

  The first time he’d seen the Graysons, the Falcons, the Taggarts, and the Masterses all together was when Sierra had been kidnapped. Shane had thought the crisis had brought them closer together. However, they’d been just as devoted at Blade and Sierra’s wedding. Shane had subsequently learned that their love was the real deal. It wasn’t for show. Where one went, the other wasn’t far behind.

  “The situation is delicate,” Trent continued. “We need someone we can trust to investigate. That’s why we didn’t consider a private firm.”

  A dull flush stained Mrs. Albright’s cheeks, but she kept her gaze level. Secrecy was needed more than they knew. Paige was on to her, but she hadn’t connected the dots yet. When her daughter did, there would be hell to pay. Telling Mrs. Albright that her daughter was suspicious of her would solve nothing and only worry her more. She had suffered enough.

  Staring across the room at the attractive but obviously worried woman in her early sixties who reminded him so much of the daughter she wanted to protect, Shane made the only decision he felt logical. “I’ll find out all I can about Crenshaw, but I take my responsibilities here seriously. I’m sorry, but I can’t leave at the moment.”

  “I admire your loyalty. Perhaps if you saw her picture.” Opening the designer croc handbag on the seat beside her, Mrs. Albright stood.

  Shane came to his feet, as did all the men in the room. “See. This was taken the day she interviewed and got her first job. She works with a nonprofit agency and has taken a special interest in foster children.”

  Shane briefly wondered if Mrs. Albright had influenced her daughter’s decision. Trent had been raised in foster care.

  Stopping in front of Shane, Mrs. Albright’s delicate hands clenched for a second. Her voice firmed. “Paige gives so much. I won’t let her be used.”

  Shane stared at the wallet-sized photograph of the beautiful, laughing woman with a heart-shaped face, her eyes bright with happiness and a hint of mischievousness. He was unable to keep the picture of her frightened and trembling in his arms from overshadowing the image. Seeing her might put that memory to rest, but he wasn’t sure how he’d handle seeing another man with his hands on her.

  “If Shane won’t help, we’ll keep looking until we find someone who will.” Trent’s arm went around Mrs. Albright. “Don’t worry, Mama.”

  And that was the secret that Shane knew instinctively would tear Paige’s world apart. She’d snuck onto Trent’s estate to find out the connection between Trent and her mother. Paige hadn’t found what she sought, but that didn’t mean she’d stop trying.

  As far as he could determine, she thought she and her brother, Zachary, were their mother’s only children. What would happen when she learned differently? She’d lost a father she loved and was worried about her mother. There was a distinct possibility that a man wanted her money more than he wanted her. If ever there was a person who didn’t need any more problems heaped on her, it was Paige.

  Still, he’d learned never to take on an assignment without knowing what he was getting into first. “I’ll think it over and give you my final answer in a few days.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “I haven’t said I’d help,” Shane cautioned her.

  “You didn’t say no. I have to hope,” Mrs. Albright said. “I won’t let Paige ruin her life the way—” Her voice trailed off. Swallowing, she turned away to pick up her handbag. “Thank you for listening.”

  Shane watched Mrs. Albright and Trent leave, knowing full well what she hadn’t finished saying and how painfully true it was. The way I ruined mine.

  “Mother, why do you keep disappearing?”

  Paige Albright whispered the question that she had been trying to find the answer to for the past three months. Sitting on the stairs in her mother’s house with a clear view of the front door, she shivered and wrapped her slim arms around her jittery stomach. She knew the where, but the answer had come at a steep price.

  Paige’s bungling attempt to find out why had ended in disaster and humiliation. Clamping her eyes tightly shut didn’t prevent the image of the powerfully built man towering over her, pinning her body to the ground. He hadn’t hurt her, but he’d frightened her, made her feel foolish and helpless . . . which was inexplicably worse.

  Those feelings were too much like those of the young Paige before she’d finally started to come into her own the summer she turned seventeen. From that point on, she no longer had to wonder what cruel genie had mistakenly dropped her into a beautiful family of high achievers with outgoing parents and a gorgeous and musically gifted older brother.

  She’d blossomed and become what she’d always longed for, the delight of her father’s eye. Tears misted in her eyes. She missed him so much. And since his death, her mother was somehow different.

  It wasn’t just the out-of-town trips she’d started going on; it was something else. At times she seemed unbearably sad, staring into space. Paige might have thought her mother was mourning the loss of her father, but a few weeks after the funeral she’d accidentally heard her mother talking with her lawyer in the library.

  After thirty-five years of marriage, Paige was shocked to learn her mother had been preparing to file for divorce. With her father’s business in trouble, her mother couldn’t have picked a worse time to add to his problems.

  Six weeks after her father’s death, her mother had put up their house for sale. It sold in three weeks. Even before the sale was final, her mother had moved into her parents’ house, which she’d kept after their deaths. With Paige’s apartment complex being sold to a developer, she had grabbed the opportunity to move in with her mother and try to figure out why she had changed and become secretive since Paige’s father had died.

  Thus far Paige wasn’t doing very well, but she refused to give up. Until she had concrete information she wasn’t going to worry her brother Zachary. Her Grammy-winning brother was in the middle of producing an album for one of the biggest pop stars in the country. Yet he wouldn’t hesitate to help or come home if she called him.

  When they were growing up, Zachary had tried so hard to help her overcome her shyness and be assertive the way he was. And although she’d failed miserably, he loved her anyway. He never minded if she wanted to tag along with him. Not once had he complained about babysitting her when their parents went out. She looked up to her brother. She was handling this on her own.

  Headlights speared through the fourteen-foot windows on either side of the recessed double front doors. Her mother’s Lexus was in the garage. Paige unfolded her arms and straightened her spine. A few minutes later the locks disengaged, the arched steel-and-glass door swung open. Her mother was finally home.

  “Where have you been?”

  Startled, Joa
nn Albright dropped the small overnight case in the foyer and swung around, her hand pressed to her chest. “Paige! I-I didn’t expect you.”

  Exactly the reason Paige had chosen to surprise her mother and perhaps get some answers. Aware that her mother hadn’t answered the question, Paige slowly rose from the foot of the stairs and walked to her. “Where have you been?”

  “Been?” her mother repeated, her eyes darting away. Bending, she picked up the case. “You know where.”

  Paige barely stopped herself from hissing, Don’t lie. “Where did you—” Again she caught herself. The word on the tip of her tongue was sneak. Her mother was one of the most honest, loving women she knew. Or at least Paige had thought she was until her father’s death. She was sure it had something to do with Trent Masters; Paige just couldn’t figure out exactly what.

  She’d thought of putting the question to her mother too many times to count, but was almost afraid of the answer. Her father certainly hadn’t wanted to speak of the afternoon Paige dropped by their home to watch the photo shoot for a home interior magazine.

  Paige had found her mother hysterical, her father in a rage, and a man she later learned was Trent Masters asking her mother a question that seemed to have no reason. If Trent and the people with him were con artists as her father insisted, why would her mother visit him? She’d hired a private investigator to find out that much, then dismissed him. She hadn’t wanted him to learn any information that might prove embarrassing or detrimental to her mother. She just wanted answers and things to be as they were before.

  “I thought you were taking a business trip to Chicago?” her mother said, moistening her lips.

  “So you thought you’d be free to do whatever it is you do when you disappear,” Paige said, watching her mother’s eyes dart guiltily away.

  “I love you, Paige,” her mother said, her gaze finally meeting hers, her voice soft and quivering.