Back in Black

by Lori Foster

  So that they’d all fit, they took Audrey’s car rather than Brett’s truck, but he drove. Gillian climbed into the backseat without a word, and then she fretted all the way to the hospital.

  Brett glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “He’ll be okay, Gillian.”

  She nodded. “I know. Thank you.” As they pulled up to the hospital, she said, “Will you just drop me at the door?”

  “We could come in and keep you company,” Audrey offered.

  But Gillian refused her. “You look as wiped out as I feel, and besides, Drew won’t like an audience while he’s not one hundred percent.”

  Brett figured she was right about that. “Will you call us if either of you needs anything?”

  She smiled, wiped at her eyes as more tears seeped out. “I’m being ridiculous, I know, but if that bullet had done more damage . . .” She shuddered. “Even after I stopped denying how I felt, I didn’t want to tell Drew. I thought if he didn’t know, I could protect myself. But that was just plain foolish.”

  Brett pulled up in front of the main doors and put the car in park. “Looking back is a waste of time, Gillian. Believe me, I know.”

  Pausing in her exit from the car, Gillian tipped her head and studied him. “If we never look back, we might avoid dwelling on bad times, but we miss out on fond memories, too. It’s always a balance.” She reached up and touched Brett’s shoulder. “But the most important thing is to face the future without letting the past get in the way.”

  And with that sage advice thrown out there, she got out of the car and came around to Audrey’s window. “Thank you both again.”

  Brett watched her hustle into the hospital, shoulders back and stride proud, despite what she’d just been through.

  After a second, Brett let out a breath. “She’s right, you know.”

  Audrey nodded but didn’t quite look at him. “I’m looking forward to a future . . . with you.”

  His heart damn near broke in two. Gillian made so much sense that now he saw how he’d almost let the past cheat him of a future. He caught Audrey and pulled her half over the console so he could kiss her.

  The lingering scent of smoke wrenched him, reminding him of how easily he could have lost her.

  With his forehead against hers, he whispered, “Before, when I said I was falling in love with you?”

  She said nothing, just closed her eyes.

  “I lied, Audrey. I fell a long time ago, almost from the first time you kissed me.” He put a few inches between them so he could see her face. “I love you.”

  Her arms wrapped tight around him. “Let’s go home, Brett. Spice is waiting for you.”

  THREE MONTHS LATER

  DREW sat beside Brett after he’d achieved an impressive knockout the night before. Drew’s arm had healed pretty fast and only a slight scar remained as a reminder of that awful night. Gillian was now officially his fiancée, and she’d already given up her apartment to live with him full-time.

  Millie was still being evaluated, though how it could take so long, Drew couldn’t fathom. Anyone could see she was loony. At least they kept her in a high-security facility while the court system worked it all out.

  Brett and Audrey were now an item, too. The romance hadn’t negatively affected Brett at all. He was the same hard worker, with the same dedication. But now, more often than not, he had Audrey at his side.

  Surrounded by media, flashing lights, and fans, Drew gave a few statements about his plans for Brett in the SBC and then took questions.

  Of course, as always, some asshole couldn’t resist asking about Brett’s background. They wouldn’t give up on that and it drove Drew nuts. He’d already banned two persistent reporters who couldn’t refrain.

  Drew thought about what he wanted to say, knew Gillian and Fran would both be watching, and decided, what the hell? Sometimes a rough edge was needed.

  Staring out at the crowd, Drew said, “Fuck the past. Fighters like Brett are the future of the SBC, and that’s what we’re here to talk about.”

  Brett leaned forward. “Let’s put this to rest, okay?” Relaxed, sincere, and comfortable, he gave a brief accounting of his parents’ woes and his dysfunctional childhood. He blew it off as it pertained to him, but then, while he had everyone’s attention, he announced a new charity that he’d started to help abused and abandoned kids.

  That inspired lots of personal questions, and Brett fielded them all with information on how others could contribute to help kids in need.

  Once the questions died down, Drew covered the mic with his hand and said, “You sly dog. Well played.”

  Brett grinned. “It was my and Audrey’s idea to start the charity, but it was Gillian’s idea for me to announce it when the personal questions started again. It not only deflects off of me, it brings some publicity to kids in need.”

  He should have known. “Damn,” Drew said. “Smart women are so fucking hot.”

  Brett laughed as he pushed back his chair.

  Drew led the way out of the back of the press room. He was glad that Brett had finally come to grips with his past and was looking to the future.

  “Love the charity idea,” he told Brett. “I’ll donate cash, of course, but let’s have dinner with the ladies to talk about anything else you need.”

  “Thanks.” Brett gave him a nod. “Gillian said you already support a boys’ home. She figured you’d want in on this, too.”

  “Yeah, well, Gillian tends to see the best in me. It’s thanks to her that I’m back in black.” He clapped Brett on the shoulder. “The future couldn’t look any better.”

  Brett agreed.

  Following is a special excerpt from

  Mad, Bad and Blonde

  by Cathie Linz

  Coming from Berkley Sensation

  in March 2010!

  IT was the perfect day for a wedding. Too bad the groom didn’t show up.

  Faith West shivered in the beam of May sunlight streaming through a small window in the bridal anteroom of the historical Chicago Gold Coast church. Fingering the rich white satin skirt of her wedding dress, she sat very still, unable to believe this was really happening to her. Alan Anderson, the man she’d agreed to marry, was late for his own wedding.

  There had to be a reasonable explanation for Alan’s absence—car trouble, a dead cell phone, maybe even an accident, heaven forbid.

  Faith caught sight of herself in the large mirror on the opposite wall. A few wisps of her brown hair had escaped the confines of her upswept hairstyle, and her blue eyes appeared haunted despite her perfect makeup. Did she look like the kind of woman a man would leave at the altar? Possibly. She was certainly no raving beauty. She was just a librarian. A librarian with a rich private investigator father.

  Faith’s family flitted around her like a skittish school of fish, coming and going—offering help, offering suggestions, offering vodka. She remained calm in the center of all the chaos, strangely distant from her surroundings. The reality was she was probably going into shock and should accept the offer of alcohol purely for medicinal purposes.

  The question was: what would Jane Austen do in this situation? Whenever Faith was in trouble, she looked to her favorite author for the solution. And Faith was armpit deep in trouble at the moment.

  “I bet you scared the poor man away,” Faith’s pain-in-the-butt aunt Lorraine interrupted Faith’s racing thoughts to declare. “A children’s librarian whose father taught her how to shoot a gun. A big mistake.”

  Aunt Lorraine, also known as the Duchess of Grimness, was the bane of the West family’s existence. With her demonlike black hair and Hellboy eyes, she was scarier than anything written by Stephen King. Not exactly the model wedding guest, but Faith’s mom had insisted on inviting her.

  For a wild second Faith wondered if Alan had stayed away because he was afraid of Aunt Lorraine, having met her for the first time at the rehearsal dinner the night before. Maybe she was the reason he hadn’t shown up. Could Faith really bla
me him for wanting to avoid Aunt Lorraine’s stinging barbs?

  Hell yes, she could blame him! How could Alan leave her sitting here wondering what had happened to him? How could he be so cruel? How could anyone, aside from Aunt Lorraine, be that cruel?

  Alan wasn’t just anyone. He was her fiancé—a reliable and respectable investment banker she’d known for two years. They’d been engaged for the past eleven months. They were perfectly suited for each other, sharing the same interests, values, and aspirations. Neither one of them was blinded by passion or prone to wild behavior.

  That’s not to say that the sex between them hadn’t been good; it had been. Not great but good. She loved him. He loved her. Or so he’d said last night before kissing her.

  Faith looked around. Someone had led Aunt Lorraine away. She was replaced by Alan’s shamefaced best man. “Alan just sent you a text message.”

  “Where is he? Is he okay?”

  Instead of answering her anxious questions, the best man hightailed it out of the room, heading for the nearest exit and no doubt the nearest bar.

  “Where’s my BlackBerry?” Faith asked her maid of honor, her cousin Megan, who was like a sister to her. Faith and Megan were born two days apart, grew up within a few blocks of each other, and had been known to complete each other’s sentences. Their dads were brothers. Faith only had one bridal attendant and of course that was Megan.

  “I’m sure Alan has a good reason for being late.” Megan had always been the optimist in the family. “Maybe he was in an accident. Your dad is still checking the area emergency rooms.”

  Faith’s überworkaholic father owned the most successful investigative firm in Chicago. If Alan wasn’t in an emergency room, then her father would be tempted to put him in one.

  “Where’s my BlackBerry?” Faith heard the edge of hysteria in her voice but couldn’t do anything to stop it.

  “Here. It’s right next to you.” Megan handed it to her. Sure enough, there was a text message from Alan that had been sent two minutes earlier.

  thought i wanted marriage. i don’t. i need to find who i really am. i want adventure and excitement. don’t want u. sorry.

  Alan hadn’t left her because she could shoot a gun. He’d left because he didn’t think she was exciting enough. She’d scared him away by boring him to death.

  “What did he say?” Megan demanded.

  Her cousin was her best friend, but even so Faith was too humiliated to show her what Alan had written. Instead she turned the BlackBerry off with trembling fingers. “I’ve been dumped in a text message,” she said unsteadily. “And not just dumped, but left at the altar.”

  “We never actually walked down the aisle.”

  “Close enough.” Faith angrily wiped away the tears that were starting to stream down her face. “There are people waiting out there. Lots of them. And they’re all expecting a wedding.”

  “They’ll all be on your side.”

  That was cold comfort at this point. Faith welcomed the anger starting to surge through her. It kept the pain and humiliation at bay.

  So much for her happy ending. Faith had continued to believe in her fairy-tale wedding even when Alan hadn’t shown up for the pre-ceremony photographs, even when his best man had refused to look her in the eye, even when the minister had approached her privately to ask if she wanted to delay the proceedings.

  “He’ll show up,” Faith had kept saying. “You’ll see. He’ll show up. And he’ll have the lamest excuse for being late.”

  Her belief in Alan and her faith in a positive outcome had lasted longer than it should have and was now as tattered as the lace handkerchief she’d nervously shredded with her beautifully manicured fingers.

  Last night he’d claimed he loved her, yet today he didn’t want her. How did that work? Did Alan love her like he loved fine wine and the Cubs instead of the way you loved the person you were supposed to marry? Weren’t Cub fans supposed to be the most loyal guys on the planet?

  Faith was having a hard time thinking coherently and she felt cold enough to get frostbite. The man she loved didn’t want her. She couldn’t think about that or she’d dissolve into a sobbing mess. But she could think of nothing else.

  Her parents burst into the anteroom. “I finally tracked him down,” Jeff West said. His usually smooth brown hair was messed from him running impatient fingers through it. “The bastard took a flight to Bali an hour ago. One way.”

  Alan has gone to Bali searching for adventure and excitement, because he couldn’t fi nd any with me. So much for love and commitment. I guess those things don’t matter to him. I don’t matter to him.

  What had she done to make him change his mind about marrying her? He couldn’t have thought she was boring when he proposed. So what had changed?

  Would Alan have stayed if he’d known she was a crack shot with a gun? Her dad had taken her to the firing range and taught her himself when she was ten. Faith had never told Alan about her weapons training because she didn’t like to brag about the marksmanship awards she’d won. Maybe she should have. Maybe then he’d have thought twice about dumping her. Maybe then he’d have thought she was more exciting. A children’s librarian who had a gun and knew how to use it. Yeah, that ranked right up there on the excitement scale with . . . what?

  What was Alan’s definition of exciting? Interest rates and the stock market? Sex in the middle of Wrigley Field? A blow job in Bali?

  “You poor baby.” Faith’s mother, Sara, sat beside her and hugged her. “He seemed like such a nice investment banker.”

  “There was nothing in his background to indicate he’d bolt like this,” her dad said. “I had him thoroughly checked out. Other than being a Cubs fan instead of a Sox fan, there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with him. He wasn’t seeing another woman, or another man, wasn’t defrauding the bank or his clients.”

  “Maybe he just got a case of cold feet,” Megan said. “He could still come back.”

  “And when he does, I’ll beat the crap out of him,” Jeff growled.

  Faith would have thought that her fiancé would be smart enough to figure out that dumping her at this late date meant there was no place he could hide. Not even Bali. Her father would track him down and make him pay . . . big time.

  Only one person was more imposing than Jeff West and that was Aunt Lorraine, who was now trying to push her way back into the room.

  “Get rid of her,” Faith begged her parents.

  “Gladly,” her dad said. “Do you think I haven’t wanted to make her disappear for years now? But your mother would never let me.”

  “She’s my much older sister,” Sara said apologetically. “She practically raised me.”

  “And she scares you shitless,” Jeff said. “Believe me, I get it.”

  “She implied it was my fault Alan left,” Faith said. It turned out the Duchess of Grimness was right. According to Alan’s brief text message, it was obvious that he blamed Faith for being too dull for him.

  “Your fault? That does it.” Sara glared at Lorraine, who was still trying to get in the room but was being prevented by Megan. “She’s gone too far this time.” A curtain of fierce determination fell over Sara’s face. “Don’t worry, I’ll handle her.” She marched over and moved Lorraine out of the room.

  Watching her mother’s totally uncharacteristic behavior, Faith realized anything was possible. Anything but her wedding. There was no saving that now.

  “What are we going to do?” Faith asked her dad. “All those people are out there waiting. We’ve got the wedding reception at the Ritz-Carlton. You paid so much for everything.” Tears welled again but she dashed them away. Alan had said there were only a handful of people he wanted to invite. His parents were dead and he had no other close family. Since almost all of the guests were from her side of the family, Alan had been perfectly happy to have Jeff foot the bill, and her dad had done so with boatloads of paternal pride.

  Again, what would Jane Austen do? She would ta
ke control.

  “Tell the people in the church that due to circumstances beyond our control, the ceremony has been canceled,” Faith said. “Tell them the reception is still on. Don’t cancel it. You might as well enjoy it.”

  “That’s my girl,” her dad said. “We’ll get our money’s worth as a celebration of friends and family. And it makes good business sense since a lot of West Investigation’s top clients are also in the audience and will be at the reception.”

  “Are you nuts?” her mom said, having rejoined them in time to hear Faith’s request.

  “Probably,” Faith muttered.

  “I was talking to your father.” She turned to face him. “Your daughter is suffering and all you can do is talk about business and money?”

  “I could put out a hit on Alan,” Jeff growled, “but I’m restraining myself.”

  “I know people who could do the job,” Faith’s paternal grandmother said, speaking up for the first time. Her blue eyes and high cheekbones proclaimed her Scandinavian heritage while her gelled, spiky haircut revealed her rebel nature. “They’re in the Swedish mob.”

  Jeff frowned. “I never heard of the Swedish mob.”

  “Of course not. They’re very discreet. Not like the Finnish mob.”

  “I appreciate the offer, Gram, but it’s not necessary,” Faith said.

  “Well, if you change your mind, the offer stands,” Gram assured her.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “You do that.” She patted Faith’s hand. “I’m sorry things didn’t work out.”

  “Thanks.” She took a deep breath but felt the walls closing in on her. “Listen, you guys don’t have to stay with me. Go on to the reception and please give everyone my regrets, but I just can’t . . .” She shook her head, unable to go on.

  “You have nothing to be regretful about,” her mom said.

  “Except regret at ever hooking up with Alan the Asshole to begin with.”