by Lora Leigh
8
She slipped into the house, using skills she’d learned over the summer in Madrid. And she was quite proud of what she’d learned as well. She managed to sneak right into the senator’s house without tripping alarms or alerting security. Just as her trainers had taught her to do.
God, she just loved the CIA. They rocked.
What didn’t rock was the past months of unreturned calls and messages she’d sent to her only and best friend, Alyssa. Summer owed Alyssa and her parents more than her life. But to Alyssa she owed a debt that could never be repaid. One she’d sworn she would at least pay the interest on by ensuring her friend’s protection.
They’d lost touch after Alyssa’s visit to Madrid, though. It was partly her own fault, Summer knew. Her training had been hell. The limited amount of time she had to put into it without alerting her brothers to her new vocation had required more hours in the day than she’d had.
When she’d pulled her head out of her ass a month ago to realize Alyssa hadn’t called, texted, or attempted to get hold of her in any way, she’d begun calling. To no avail. Then she’d begun texting. When Alyssa hadn’t answered the texts Summer had come straight to D.C., once she’d landed in the States again.
She’d learned immediately that Alyssa had married.
Married. Without letting her best friend know? Oh, the girl was going to pay for that one. Summer was supposed to be her maid of honor, no matter what.
Moving quietly through the house and up the servants’ stairs to the second floor, she paused at the doorway that led to the long open hall where the family suites were located. As she tilted her head, the sound of sobs barely drifting from the master suite caused Summer’s heart to clench with dread.
That was Margot crying. The woman titled the Ice Bitch because of her supposed lack of emotion? Crying?
Of course Summer knew the title was undeserved, but still, Margot never had cried. Not in all the years Summer had known her.
Senator Hampstead was out of town, which meant Alyssa’s mother should be alone. She’d better be alone anyway.
Moving to the door, Summer frowned. It was partially open, as though Margot was expecting someone, or listening for someone. Stepping inside, she paused, staring at Margot as suspicion began to rise inside her.
“Tears?” she asked softly as Margot moved quickly to her feet, attempting to dry her soaked face. “What did you do to Alyssa? She hasn’t answered my calls or texts, so you must be involved. What the fuck did you do to her, Margot?”
The woman was a robot, Summer sometimes thought. Oh, Margot loved Alyssa, but she simply had no idea how to be a mother, even after all these years.
Or did she?
Grief twisted Margot’s face.
“What’s happened to Alyssa?” The demand came as ice began to fill Summer’s veins. The deep southern accent she’d been trying to smooth slipped free as did the rein she kept on her temper. Alyssa was the only person in the world she totally trusted. If she was hurt …
“Oh, Summer,” Margot whispered, her breath hitching. “If only Alyssa had your courage.”
If she had what? Alyssa had immeasurably more courage than any of them. She put up with Margot’s ice, Summer’s antics, and still loved them all.
“This isn’t courage, Margot,” Summer assured her, the heavy drawl accompanied by a hard smile. “It’s straight up fuckin’ don’t give a shit. Alyssa’s the one with courage, because she dares to love you, you mean old hag. I’d have sliced your skinny neck by now. So why don’t you tell me what you did to Alyssa before I go find out for myself.”
“It wasn’t me.” Margot’s choked voice and tears caused fear to tighten Summer’s chest. “I’ve hurt her in the past, Summer; I know that. But she’s not hurt this time, she’s dead inside, and I would never do that to her. I would never do that to my baby…”
Summer didn’t make another demand or wait for an explanation. Turning, she moved quickly from Margot’s room and rushed to Alyssa’s. What had happened to her? She was fine in Madrid.…
She’d been quiet, though, very thoughtful. She’d ignored several calls and texts, and when Summer had asked about them Alyssa had just said she’d wanted to spend time with her. Summer had assumed it was Margot.
Stepping into Alyssa’s suite, she moved quickly through the sitting area and entered the bedroom before coming to a hard stop.
God, it was three in the morning and Alyssa was awake?
“Aly?” she whispered, moving closer as Alyssa’s gray eyes moved to her.
She could barely hold back the shock that filled her. This wasn’t her friend. Where was the laughter, the amazement that Summer was there? Where was the life?
“Darlin’,” she said softly, kneeling next to Alyssa’s bed and staring at her with rising fear. “What did you let happen to you?”
There was no laughter in Alyssa’s eyes. They were dull, the gray color so still and dark.
“I’m fine, Summer,” she said, her voice even and with little inflection. “You didn’t have to come here.”
She didn’t have to come there?
“Alyssa, do you want me to go completely postal here, darlin’?” she asked, the fear building inside her. “Tell me what happened to you, sweetie. And do it now, or you know how I can get.”
Alyssa looked so tired, so blank, as though she really didn’t care how Summer could get.
“I finally loved,” Alyssa stated as though she’d done no more than awakened that day. “I loved too deep and I lost too much.” Slicing agony flashed in her eyes as she focused on Summer. “I lost my baby, Summer. I lost my last hope.”
Her baby?
“Harvey’s baby?” How had that happened? She’d only married the bastard a few months before.
“Not Harvey’s,” Alyssa assured her.
“Whose?” Summer demanded.
“Go home, Summer,” Alyssa whispered, her eyes closing as though she were going to sleep. “I promise you, I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine,” Summer protested. “What happened to you, Alyssa? You have to tell me.”
But Alyssa wasn’t talking. She lay there, eyes closed, her breathing light, her eyes so shadowed they looked bruised.
“Summer,” Margot said her name softly.
Turning to her, seeing the motion Alyssa’s mother made for her to follow her, Summer moved quickly to her feet and into the hall. Closing the door softly behind her, she faced Margot, her fists clenched, fear for Alyssa raging through her.
“Whose baby?” she snapped.
And those tears fell from light green eyes that had once been icy, cold. They weren’t cold anymore.
Keeping her voice low, Margot told her what had happened. From the arrival of the pictures to the loss of the baby Alyssa had carried. A baby she’d been forced to bury before she’d ever heard his first cry or seen him open his eyes. A little boy with black hair tipped in blond. “A headful of it,” Margot sobbed at the mention of it.
“Who?” Summer asked again. “Who did this to her?”
Margot shook her head. “She made me swear, Summer. I swore I wouldn’t tell you. I swore I wouldn’t allow them to be harmed. Then she slipped and married Harvey Stanhope to make certain no one else suspected who the child belonged to.”
Summer stepped closer, her eyes narrowing. “Who?”
Margot should know the lengths she’d go to in protecting Alyssa.
“She has the pictures hidden in her bedroom,” Margot revealed. “Probably in that fucking hole in her closet that she called a wish box when she was a child. Look there first.”
Summer looked there.
As she drew the pictures free her eyes widened in shock.
They had done this to Alyssa? Shane Connor and Sebastian De Loren? But that made no sense.
The pictures didn’t lie, though. Alyssa’s face was suffused in pleasure and love, and their faces, their expressions, were cut in the same emotions. What Summer saw in their eyes wasn’t
the cold calculation of the men that Margot had seen. These were men who had loved.
Replacing the pictures, she sat back on her heels, her eyes narrowed. She’d overheard something at the De La Cruz home she’d stayed in. Something about the two CIA couriers and a loss that had destroyed them.
What the hell was going on?
What had they done to her friend to steal the life, the love that had shone so bright in clear eyes that were now dull and all but dead? What had they done, and how did she find a way to kill them for it?
9
SIX YEARS LATER
Stepping into the house she had moved into with Harvey Stanhope five years before, Alyssa stared around the pristine, far too opulent D.C. home his father had purchased for them.
How ecstatic Marion Stanhope had been when she and Harvey had married. Certain his son was turning over a new leaf, as his father called it, and giving up his depravities. The judgmental bastard. He’d been furious when he’d learned his son was gay. So furious he’d beaten Harvey to the point that when he showed up on the Hampstead doorstep he’d nearly been dead.
He had been her friend at one time. He and Summer had been the only friends she’d really had when she was younger. Summer had remained, but Harvey had followed his own pursuits until she’d returned from Barcelona.
He’d begged her to marry him even before he’d learned of the baby. Begged her to give him just a few years of peace from the beatings to enable him to find a way to make it stop. Against her mother’s arguments, she’d married him.
For her baby. To ensure Shane and Sebastian knew she had no intentions of asking them for anything. That she would raise her child without them.
That was six years ago. It seemed a lifetime ago. They’d been each other’s shields, so Alyssa had allowed the marriage to stand. The platonic relationship had given them both a chance to recover in some ways. Except something had changed.
It had been slow. A subtle contempt she’d felt at odd times. An anger that had begun building in the past years. And she’d had enough of it. She’d had enough of a lot of things, though. The political machinations, her sterile life, the dreams that haunted her until she thought they’d drive her insane.
Taking the staircase to the second floor, she entered her private suite and, collecting fresh clothing, entered the bathroom. Her return from England had left her exhausted but unwilling to remain in the house with Harvey. Before leaving he’d been a little erratic. Just enough to begin worrying her. Just enough to make her start looking into certain things. Things like her personal checking and savings and the huge amount taken out in the last month. The money was hers. Her income for the past years working as her parent’s social director and he’d forged her signature to her checks and stolen it. The bastard. She’d been saving for a reason, and it wasn’t so Harvey could steal it all.
She’d called her father on her way home and told him she’d be returning later that night. She just needed to pack a bag and wash the stench of the flight from her body.
Once the divorce was final she intended to leave for Pennsylvania and the house her grandparents had left her next to a gorgeous mountain lake. The house she’d once dreamed of living in with a husband, a houseful of children.
That dream was forever dead. After six years she’d accepted the fact that something vital inside her was dead as well. Shane and Sebastian had so destroyed her that once she’d lost the baby there had been nothing left for another man. No desire left for more children.
She, who had dreamed of a house filled with children, would die childless. How ironic was that?
And there was no way to revive those dreams. She’d tried. God knew she had, but she’d failed. Just as she’d failed at so many other dreams she’d had before that summer in Barcelona. Before she’d given every part of herself to two men. She should have seen the writing on the wall there, she thought painfully. Two men willing to share her? As Summer said once, where was the love?
Not that Alyssa had ever made herself fully believe that there had been no love. She’d tried. It wasn’t as though there wasn’t enough proof. There was. But believing it … if she believed it, she wouldn’t still dream of them or awake with the feel of their arms and their warmth surrounding her.
She wouldn’t still lie in silence and try to reach out to them as she once had, just to imagine she could feel their warmth.
Finishing her shower and dressing in a pair of jeans with a soft cotton shirt, she laced the sneakers she’d chosen to wear before entering the attached closet and packing a small leather bag. Just enough clothes for a few days. Anything else and she risked Harvey learning that she wasn’t coming back.
Harvey was up to something and it wasn’t just stealing her money.
She didn’t know what or what it involved, but whatever it was, it hadn’t been working out for him. He’d been confrontational and insulting when she called the night before, and she didn’t expect it would be any different now that she was home. She refused to stay and listen to his ranting when the bottom fell out of whatever plans he had this time, which was no doubt his problem.
Stepping from the bedroom, she paused at the sight of her husband waiting for her.
She hadn’t expected this, she admitted. She’d been certain he wasn’t home when she arrived.
“Hello,” she greeted him as though everything were fine and moved to her dresser. “I need to go to my parents’ for a few days. Dad has a Senate briefing he has to have completed before Monday. I should be back that evening.”
Not if she could help it.
Placing her makeup in the bag along with the small box of jewelry she kept in her dresser, she turned to face Harvey once again.
“Is everything okay?” she asked, as though everything were perfectly normal with her.
Trepidation was beginning to build inside her, though, the certainty that Harvey was far more dangerous than she’d suspected.
“Not really.” He stood at the bottom of her bed, his hazel eyes narrowed and glittering with malice.
That look had the first feeling of fear that she’d ever felt in his presence rising inside her.
“Is your father bothering you again?” Gripping the bag, she left the bedroom, desperate to get out of the house now. She should have never returned to the house, but he was supposed to be gone this weekend. He’d told her he wouldn’t be there before she left, that he had business to take care of out of the country.
And he followed her. Moving behind her from the bedroom, he followed her to the stairs and moved quickly to catch up with her.
Reaching the landing, Alyssa headed for the front door only to have him push her roughly to the side, throwing her against the wall as he blocked the exit.
“What the hell is your problem?” Straightening, Alyssa slid her hand into the pocket of the light jacket she wore and hit the emergency button her father’s chief of staff had programmed on her phone. “Get away from the door, Harvey.”
The sneer that contorted his face wasn’t in the least complimentary to his looks. Though in the past years the once almost pretty features had taken a turn for the worse anyway. Whatever he’d been involved in hadn’t been healthy. Nor had it been sane, evidently.
“Like hell!” he snapped. “Tell me, Wife, why do you think I married your bitch ass, anyway? Do you really think I needed you to protect me from dear old Dad? Do you really think Marion Stanhope would lay a hand on his only heir? Gay or not? He didn’t beat me that weekend. I did that to myself. I knew that pathetically soft heart of yours would feel sorry for me.”
Well, didn’t that just figure? She hadn’t expected it, but she wasn’t really surprised at this point. She should have suspected it, actually.
Panic was beginning to set in now. She could hear someone yelling at her from the phone in her pocket, knew she’d connected with either her father or his chief, Raeg. Someone would be there soon, she assured herself. Once she hit the panic button her father and Raeg would be rushing to
the house.
“I don’t care why you married me, Harvey,” she informed him calmly, despite the fact that she felt anything but calm. “It didn’t matter to me then and it doesn’t matter to me now.”
“Because poor little Alyssa’s heart was already broken.” He seemed to take mocking delight in that. Not that she’d ever told him it had been broken.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she assured him. “Now get away from the door and let me leave. We’ll discuss this at another time.”
They would discuss it never. She’d be damned if she’d ever allow him to so much as be in the same room with her.
The smile that curled his lips was far too confident. Far too knowing.
“You mean I don’t know about Shane Connor and Sebastian De Loren?” he asked softly, the malice in his gaze growing brighter. “But I do know about them, Alyssa. I know about how you fucked both of them. Do you know how long I’ve waited to throw that in your goody-two-shoes face? That I know you were dumped by the De Loren get? That you left Barcelona with a baby and a broken heart?” He laughed at that. “Poor little Alyssa. It was too bad about the kid. I could have said it was mine. How I would have loved that.”
As he crowed over whatever triumph he felt he had over her, Alyssa slid her hand from the pocket of her jacket, the phone gripped in it to allow everything he said to be heard by Raeg. She was certain it was Raeg. His voice had a particular timbre when he was pissed.
“Let me leave, Harvey,” she repeated, despite the pain she felt at the accusations. Not because he wanted to hurt her. Because remembering had the power to hurt her that much more. “You don’t want to try to make me stay.”
“Oh, Alyssa,” he sighed; the smile on his face terrified her. “I can’t do that. I’m sorry, bitch, but you’re not going anywhere.”
She turned her hand, showing him the phone. “Dad will be here soon, Harvey,” she warned him. “And Raeg. Do you really want to have to deal with them? You don’t want to.”
His eyes narrowed on her, fury flushing his face.
“I was so close to not even needing you anymore,” he informed her, his voice lowering, as though that would save him.