“How does Mike Rogers know we’re here?”
“My best guess is that he followed Jessica. Bottom line: he’s here. He’s in the main lobby, insisting that he sees you.”
As much as I want to send the man away, sealing the deal to split the company only helps me ensure that when Emily wakes up, I can promise her changes are in place. I force myself to release Emily’s hand and push to my feet. “Stay with Emily,” I order Seth, and I don’t wait for a reply.
Ready to end Mike Rogers as a business partner, a problem I need to deal with today, I stride around the bed and to the door, exiting into the hallway and wasting no time making my way to the elevators. I’ve just punched the call button when the doors open and, lo and behold, Mike, who shouldn’t be allowed on this floor, appears.
“Shane,” he greets me, his voice as hard as his square jaw is solid.
I don’t greet him and I don’t ask how he’s gotten in here. Staying close to Emily and Derek suits me just fine, and I back up, giving him room to enter the corridor. He exits the car, his fitted, expensive suit a tan color I’d never choose, but then, there is nothing much the two of us agree on.
“I need to speak to your father before I sign this paperwork,” he states.
“My father’s in Germany and I’m legally in control.”
“Stop the bullshit,” he says. “You wouldn’t be here in this hospital if he were being treated in Germany.”
Realization hits me. “You don’t know.”
“Apparently there’s a lot I don’t know. That’s why your father and I—”
“Derek and Emily were in a car accident Sunday night,” I say.
His eyes go wide. “What? Holy fuck. How bad?”
“Bad. And my parents don’t know and won’t know until I can tell them that Derek’s regained consciousness. That means, while you’re conspiring with my mother to destroy my father, keep your mouth shut.”
“I’m not conspiring with your mother.”
“Just fucking her,” I say. “Right. Got it.” I move on. “Whatever you want to know about the offer I gave you, ask me. My father doesn’t even know about it.”
Surprise flashes in his eyes. “And if he objects?”
“The deal will be done.”
“Why give me the most profitable part of the company?”
“Buying and selling for a profit is a profit for me. And I’m leaving this with a profit for my portion of the company. I’m leaving you with an empire. The basketball team owner who rules the pharmaceutical industry. And when my father recovers, and he will, he’s kept the side of the business he loves and created in the hedge fund operation. And my mother. He keeps my mother. Sign the deal, Mike. It’s a win for all of us, and we both like to win.”
He studies me for several drawn-out beats before he reaches into his pocket and hands me an envelope. “The contract,” he says, “and my lawsuit will be withdrawn before day’s end.”
“And my mother?”
“We haven’t spoken in weeks and we won’t in the future.”
I’d ask for his word, but I wouldn’t trust it anyway. The file of nastiness I have on him sure to turn my mother against him is another story. I accept the document and open my mouth to speak, when voices lift behind us and some sort of alarm goes off. I have no idea why, but those sounds register like a knife in my chest. I rotate toward them and see nothing, but I hear it. I feel it, whatever it is. Dread. Fear. Foreboding. I start running toward the private wing I’ve just left, adrenaline rushing through me, blood rushing in my ears, because I know, I just know, that death is here to stake a claim, and it’s not going to leave without someone I love.
CHAPTER FIVE
TWO WEEKS LATER …
Two weeks have passed. Two weeks since death visited that hospital and refused to leave without someone I loved.
I grip the cold steel of my apartment’s balcony railing, memories pounding on me, filling the dark space of a darker midnight hour with a replay of that moment when I knew my life would forever be changed. When I knew I’d forever be changed. Over and over, I see the medical staff scrambling. Over and over, their shouts and that damn alarm filling the air play in my head, echoing in the quiet hollows of downtown Denver, along with a low rumble of thunder somewhere in the not so far distance.
I blink away the images that try to form, bloody, horrible images of the restaurant that are as bad, if not, worse, than those moments in the hospital room. But I fail to erase them, and in the inky black of a starless night, I can almost see bloodstained clouds. Suddenly I am back in Martina’s restaurant, blood on my hands, blood everywhere. I just keep going back there, holding the holes in my brother’s chest shut while Emily lay several feet away, alone on the hard floor. And each time, I remember Martina standing over us, the man who ultimately motivated every action my brother and Ramon took to get us to that miserable moment. And that’s when I return to my vow to punish Martina and kill him. I want to punish him even more than I want to kill him.
A loud crash sounds somewhere on the street, and I blink back to the present, my gaze seeking out the source of that noise to find nothing but more darkness. But somewhere down there someone maneuvered wrong, right when it should have been left, or too soon, or too slow. Like I maneuvered wrong, or none of this would have happened. I should have taken Emily to New York. I should have made Derek listen. I should have done so many fucking things differently. But no. I was cocky. I knew what I was doing. I knew I was the real king, not my father.
Scrubbing my jaw, I step back into the dim glow of the barely there lights on the patio, my skin icy beneath my white T-shirt and pajama bottoms, but the cold is better than the pain. And still it doesn’t stop me from picturing the paramedics leaning over Derek and Emily, the intense looks on their faces as they worked to save their lives. Desperate to get the images out of my head, I pull my phone from my pocket and turn on the radio to a pop station sure to have meaningless lyrics playing, needing anything but my thoughts in my head. Once some bouncing, ridiculous tune is playing, I walk to the table and sit down under the overhead heater I haven’t bothered to turn on.
The music changes, and a song I know from college starts to play. “Collide,” I think it’s called, and I rest my elbows on my legs, lowering my chin to rest on my chest, the words of the song overtaking me. I’m open, you’re closed / Where I follow, you’ll go / I worry I won’t see your face / Light up again. My chest and eyes burn with those lyrics, and I am immediately remembering the tormented moment outside of the restaurant as Derek and Emily were rolled toward two separate ambulances. When I’d been forced to choose between them. When Eric had convinced me to choose Derek, that Emily was stable, and yet I feared I’d never see Emily again. Some part of me knew even then that my heart was going to be ripped out before it was all over.
Inhaling sharply, I lift my head and reach for the whiskey glass on the table next to me, downing what remains inside, which apparently is nothing. Nothing is fucking left. Until I hear my name. “Shane.”
Emily’s voice.
It reaches me above the music, and I inhale softly as the delicate notes slide into the deep black hole of my soul and make it just a little lighter. And when I draw in a breath, a familiar soft floral scent touches my nostrils.
Emily’s scent.
I can smell her. I can almost taste her, but almost isn’t real. Maybe it’s not Emily here at all. Maybe it’s just me, needing her until it hurts. Afraid it’s true, I shut my eyes again, and I savor her scent. I imagine her long, dark hair on her face, on mine. Warmth rushes over me, and I look up to find the heater above me glowing. The air shifts then, and Emily steps in front of me, a sheer white silk gown clinging to her slender body, her long, dark hair that I’d just been imagining lifting in the air. That sweet floral scent that had been taunting me moments before, taunting me again, promising she is real. She stands there, a sway from leaning into me, an untouchable angel, a piece of my dreams, which is why I don’t reac
h for her. I don’t want her to be my imagination. I don’t want to know that she’s not real. I don’t want to know that if she is real, I have a chance to destroy her all over again. The way that night in the restaurant destroyed me.
“Shane,” she says again, this time her voice a barely there whisper.
My lashes lift, and indeed she’s still here, still beautiful. Still everything I greedily need and can’t even imagine letting go. Her eyes soften, as if she’s read some part of my thoughts that even I may not understand. I’m not sure that is good or bad, considering some of the places my mind has gone these past few days. But I’m not hiding from her. I tried that once. I failed.
She lifts her arm, and my chest expands on a breath of anticipation. A moment later her palm settles on my cheek, and her touch is like a cool breeze in the burning hell I am now trapped inside. I am not worthy of her, and yet I find myself leaning into her touch, squeezing my eyes shut tighter in a conflicted moment of absorption and certainty that when I open them again, she will no longer be here. That idea spikes an emotion in me I can call only one thing: fear. Memories of her in a hospital bed, tormenting my mind: tubes and machines connected to her. Me watching her chest for its rise and fall despite the monitors telling me she was breathing.
My hand goes to hers, covering it on my jaw. My eyes reopen, fixing her in a stare. “Tell me you’re real.”
“You know I’m real.”
My arm wraps around her waist, and I pull her onto my lap, her legs straddling my hips in the wide cushioned chair I occupy, warmth beaming over us from the heater above. Our heads coming together, and for long moments, maybe even a full minute or more, we just breathe each other in. “I need…” I begin.
“Me too,” she finishes, and I know she’s struggling as I am. She was attacked. Captive. In a coma, and she woke up to a world turned upside down. She was supposed to be safe with me. I was supposed to protect her, and on that, I also failed.
“Emily,” I whisper, for no other reason than I just want her on my lips, on my tongue, in every possible way.
“I’m here,” she breathes out, dragging her gown over her head and tossing it aside, leaving herself naked but for her panties, her breasts high, her nipples pebbled. Her body is perfection to me and yes, I am instantly hard. Yes, I want to be inside her, but nothing about this moment or night is about sex or fucking. It’s about that need we spoke of that cannot even be fully quantified or explained. It just is, and as I drag Emily closer, my hand finds the spot between her shoulder blades and I mold her to me. Holding her too tight and yet not tight enough as my mind replays her screams when I entered that restaurant, before that moment when shots were fired and a bloody hell followed. “That night…” I begin.
“I don’t remember,” she says. “I really don’t.”
I believe her, and I’m not sure if that’s a gift or a curse. “Just know this,” I say. “I will never let you get hurt again. I will never let anyone touch you but me, and if they try, I swear to God above, I’ll kill them.”
“No,” she says, her fingers curling into my T-shirt as she pulls back to look at me. “Don’t do that to yourself or me. You can’t protect me from everything and everyone, and that’s not what I want from you.”
I tangle my fingers in her hair, dragging her lips a brush from mine. “I can and I will,” I say, sealing that vow with a kiss, my mouth closing over hers, my tongue sliding into her mouth in a deep caress, followed by another, the taste of her bittersweet in ways I wish I could erase. She moans, a soft, sweet sound that vibrates on my tongue, but just as she melts into me, a sudden downpour of rain and hail jolts us apart, our mouths lingering close, and it’s like the storm sets off an eruption between us. One minute we are sitting there, listening to the thunder of the hail against the railing behind us, the next our mouths come together again, and this time we aren’t just kissing. We are drinking each other in, consuming each other, and yet we seem to be incapable of getting enough of some unnamed critical something that is all part of that need we expressed.
She reaches for my shirt and starts tugging it upward. I answer her action by tearing my mouth from hers, dragging it over my head and tossing it aside. It’s barely gone when her fingers are in my hair, her lips on mine again. Her hands on my skin, touching, caressing, while mine are on hers, and I can feel the burn of some dark emotion inside me turning to lust. Driven by that emotion, I reach down and rip away Emily’s panties, swallowing her soft, sexy gasp, the slide of her tongue against mine, fuel to the lust raging inside me, thickening my cock.
Lifting her, I feel one of us maneuver my pants—me, her, I really don’t know or care—until she is sliding down the thick pulse of my erection, taking me inside her. And once she has, we don’t linger there either. We don’t savor the moment she has all of me. There is still that need between us, ravishing, demanding satisfaction, and we answer with the sway of our bodies, the licks of our tongues. The frenzied grind of hips against hips. We’re wild. We’re lost in each other, the sound of hail and rain mingling with the pants and sighs of pleasure until I hear her panted, “Shane,” and feel her body tense with her release, her sex gripping my shaft as surely as her fingers tug on my hair. And I’m right there with her, riding the wave of her release right into mine, my body quaking with her body. Time fades. The hell of the past few weeks disappears. There is just this woman who I love, who I need to protect and love some more.
We collapse together, her soft curves against the hard lines of my body, which doesn’t relax. I’m not sure I’ll ever relax again. But holding her like this, having her close, her breath warm on my shoulder, telling me she’s alive and well, this is the closest thing to peace I’ve felt in weeks. That is, until I hear her sob. I shift her, cupping her face, and bring her gaze to mine, my thumbs stroking tears from her eyes. “Talk to me.”
“I remember now. I don’t know what about this moment jolted my memory. Maybe it’s your emotions feeding mine, but I remember. God. I remember him throwing himself on top of me, Shane. I remember Derek protecting me.” Her hands go to my wrist. “Shane. He died protecting me. It’s my fault.”
“No. No, this not your fault,” I say. “You didn’t make him get involved with Martina. You didn’t do this.”
“He was protecting me,” she says.
“And he wanted you to survive. That’s the first thing he asked me in the ambulance. Were you okay. He wanted you to be okay.”
She presses her hands to her face. “Oh God. Derek.”
I grab my shirt from the floor and pull out of her before pressing it between her legs, righting my pajamas, and then scooping her up. She curls against my chest, the dampness of her tears touching my skin, and I carry her inside, shutting the patio door and heading toward the bedroom. In a few seconds I’ve climbed the stairs and entered our bedroom, the light a dim glow from the lamp on her nightstand, while mine remains off. I settle her on the bed, and while I intend to lie down with her, she is quick to sit up, sliding to the edge of the bed.
“I hate what I’m feeling right now,” she says, her words and actions telling me that she feels as naked inside as out right now.
I grab the blanket at the end of the mattress and wrap it around her, settling on a knee in front of her. “You didn’t do this,” I say. “You are not to blame.”
“Says the man who has done nothing but blame himself since I woke up from my coma?” She laughs without humor. “Coma. I was in a coma.”
“But you’re alive and well now.”
“Because of Derek,” she says. “The funeral’s in a few days, Shane. How do I face your parents when they arrive for the funeral, knowing it was him or me and it ended up being me?”
“My parents are the ones who should be afraid to face us and themselves in the mirror,” I say, anger spiking in me hard and fast. “My father pushed Derek to do anything to succeed while my mother plotted against him to ensure she was on the arm of Mike Rogers when he claimed control of the company.” br />
“You don’t understand, Shane,” she says, her voice quaking. “I remember now. I remember the moment when a gun was pointed at me and when Derek threw himself in front of me. He selflessly threw himself in front of me and a bullet. I’d be dead right now if not for him.”
“And if there is a heaven and a hell, and I believe there is, you are the reason he’s not burning in hell. You became the vehicle that let the brother I knew and loved but thought was lost be discovered again. That brother would always put someone else before himself.”
“If he was willing that night, he was always willing,” she says. “He was always that person. Had I left when I tried to leave, and stayed out of his life and yours, he might have walked out of there that night alive. I complicated the situation. I should not have inserted myself into your lives.”
“That’s nothing but survivor’s guilt talking,” I say. “And I’m pretty sure there have been books written on it. It’s natural to blame yourself, but you are not to blame. He was in bed with a drug lord, ready to get deeper under the covers. That doesn’t exactly spell long life.”
“Part of me wishes I wouldn’t have remembered what happened,” she whispers. “Another part knows he deserves to have me remember.”
“He deserves to have us remember,” I agree.
“But your parents—”
“Don’t need to know,” he says. “It wouldn’t matter to them.”
“He was a hero in the end,” she says. “As his parents—”
“It won’t matter to them, Emily,” I say, my voice as hard as the reality behind the words.
“Do you really believe that?”
“Yes,” I say without hesitation. “I do, and I know you know it’s true.”
“I don’t know,” she says. “And I want you to be wrong.”
“They both used him, and me for that matter, in their own ways, on their own terms. I had to wait to tell my father that Derek was dead until after he told me he was in remission. Even Derek’s funeral has to wait for their return home.”