Chapter Seventeen
It was near midnight and Royce lay in his bed, Lauren snuggled to his side sleeping, something he couldn’t seem to manage. Three days had passed, and despite his caveman behavior at her office, as Lauren often called it, or perhaps because of it, she’d changed, let down her guard with him. She finally seemed to get how much he was invested in what was going on with them. Any happiness he might have arrived at from that was diminished by the torment of knowing that he was failing to protect her, proven by the fact that every day came with another calendar sheet delivered by what seemingly was a damn ghost. One had been stuffed in a lunch bag from a delivery to her office, but no one at the restaurant claimed to have put it there. One had been on his truck window despite the video footage that showed nothing. The final one had been left with the security desk at her building, delivered by a little old lady who disappeared, and was never seen again. And every single delivery was a taunt that said “I can get to her whenever I want to” and Royce knew it.
His cell phone started to vibrate on the bedside table and he grabbed it, certain a call at this hour wasn’t good. Lauren’s head popped up. ”What time is it?”
“Late,” he said, answering the call that the ID identified as Bill Smith, the Senator’s staff security person.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, not bothering with ‘hello.’ He untwined himself from Lauren to sit up, anticipating trouble and heading to his closet.
“Senator Reynolds’ house is on fire.”
Royce stopped in his tracks. “How?”
“I’m not there yet but I’m being told it’s obvious arson.”
Holy hell. “Is everyone okay?”
“The senator certainly is, enough so that he’s yelling at me and telling me I need to get my ass over here and start doing my job. He wants you there. That’s an order.”
An order. Right. He didn’t even work for the man. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.” He ended the call and dialed Luke, managing to get his pants on while it rang. “Get over here, dressed, and ready to leave. And get Blake down here to stay with Lauren.” He didn’t wait for a reply, ending the call and reaching for a shirt and pulling it over his head.
“What’s happening?” Lauren asked, on her knees now and clutching the blanket. “What’s wrong? Is everyone okay?”
Damn, he didn’t want to tell her this. He grabbed his boots and headed for the bed. “No one is hurt.” He sat down next to her. “Everyone is completely fine.” He quickly put on his boots and ran his hands down his pants.
“But? I hear the ‘but’. What is going on?”
“I’m going to repeat this to make sure I’m making myself clear. Everyone is okay but there has been a fire at your father’s house.”
“What? How? Oh, God. I have to get over there.” She shoved away the blanket and he shackled her arm.
“No,” he said. “You need to stay here. I need to know you’re safe so I can deal with your father.”
“Why do you need to deal with my father? He’s my father.” She frowned. “Why did he call you?”
“That was Bill, his security guy.”
“I don’t understand. Why did Bill call you?”
He wasn’t going to lie to her. He hadn’t done so before now, and doing so would only make her think worse of him later. “It’s complicated. Too complicated to explain at this moment. I know you’re worried but everyone is safe. It’s you who might not be if you’re there, in the middle of all the chaos, where you’re an easy target.”
“I don’t understand what’s going on.” She shook her head. “I... what aren’t you telling me?”
“I promise you that I will explain everything when I get back.” He caressed her cheek. “Please, baby. I’m begging you here. No caveman routine. No demands. I’m asking. Let me deal with this without worrying about you.”
“I don’t want to stay here.”
“I know. And I wouldn’t ask you to, not under these circumstances, if I didn’t really feel like it was important.”
She considered him a long moment. “Fine. Yes. But only if you call me when you get there. I want to know you’ve seen my father with your own two eyes and that he’s really okay.”
“I will.” He leaned in and kissed her, and his gut clenched. He hesitated, knowing this was the wrong time to tell her how he felt, but afraid not to. She was going to find out about his deal with her father tonight, he just knew it, and she was going to hate him.
Knocking sounded from the front door and he silently cursed. “I have to go.” He kissed her again and took off for the other room, forcing himself to leave her.
***
Lauren walked to the living room, shoving her arms in her red silk robe, only to come face to face with Blake. He stood by the couch, fully dressed, his long hair wild and loose around his shoulders, his eyes blurry with barely escaped sleep.
They stared at each other several beats, before he said, “Not the best circumstances to get to know each other, but I’ve always found the best way to get past niceties and awkward shit is food.” He motioned to the kitchen. “Want to go raid the fridge with me?”
She sighed, surprised and relieved at how easily he’d torn away the tension. “There’s leftover pizza but I get the cheese slices.”
He grinned, his brown eyes friendly, warm. ”Deal.”
A few minutes later they sat at the coffee table, eating cold pizza and drinking soda, both of them with their cell phones lying on the table. “How’s your arm?” he asked.
“Much better. It’s going to scar but I can live with that.” She dropped a piece of crust into the box. “Do you think the same person set the fire?”
“Yes.” He sucked down some drink.
“You don’t candy coat things, I see.”
“Nope.” He reached for another slice of pizza.
“Aren’t you ATF or ex-ATF? Shouldn’t you be at the fire?”
“I don’t know the people involved the way Royce and Luke do.”
“You mean my father.”
“And the suspects.”
“What suspects.” Her stomach fell to her feet. “You mean you think this involves me, don’t you?”
He moved the empty pizza box. “Don’t you?”
She swallowed hard. “I... I didn’t know we thought the fire was intentional.”
“It was.”
The phone in the kitchen rang and Lauren started to get up. “It’s not him,” Blake said. “He never answers that phone or calls it. I don’t know why he has the damn thing.” He reached under the coffee table and pulled out a deck of cards. “You're not going to sleep. We might as well play.”
“I wish he’d call.”
“He’ll call,” Blake said. “But once you get on a scene things tend to get crazy.”
“What if he’s wrong and my father is hurt?”
He grabbed his phone. “I’ll call Luke if it will make you feel better.”
“Thank you. Thank you, Blake.”
Luke answered almost immediately and Blake quickly told Lauren, “Your father is fine. He’s currently yelling at Royce, which is why he hasn’t called us.” He chatted with Luke a moment and then hung up. “Before you ask, I have no idea why your father is yelling at Royce. But yelling means he’s alive and kicking and isn’t that all that really matters?”
“What if his house had been burned down because of me? What if someone would have died?”
“Those things didn’t happen.” He studied her a long moment. “Take it from me, Lauren. ‘What if’ will eat you alive. Don’t do that to yourself.”
He was talking about what happened to his fiancée; she knew he was.
He grabbed the cards. “Since we don’t have ‘Old Maid,’ how about ‘Go Fish’?”
“Go Fish,” she said. “That’s a walk down childhood lane. I’m in.” She’d do anything to keep from climbing the walls. “Let me go put on some coffee first.”
Lauren headed to the kitchen and quickly started to load the coffee pot, realizing just how comfortable she was here, how at home she felt in Royce’s place. He felt right. They felt right. She flipped the pot on and promised herself she wasn’t going to read into what was happening tonight, or his promise to tell her everything, that inferred he’d been keeping something from her.
The phone on the wall rang again about the time that she reached for two coffee mugs in the cabinet, and it hit her that it was the middle of the night. Who called at a time like this? Her nerves prickled, worry filling her. When she would have headed back to the living room, she just stood there, waiting on the machine, certain the ticking clock had found her. The beep sounded and a voice came on the line instead.
“Royce, sugar,” a female purred. “Donna here. Where have you been, baby? Call me so we can do dinner or whatever else you want to do.” Lauren clenched the cups, feeling her chest tighten with emotion, a flashback of finding Roger in bed with another woman turning into an image of Royce with another woman.
“She’s no one, Lauren,” Blake said from behind her.
She whirled around to face him. “That didn’t sound like no one.”
“She didn’t even rate his cell phone number.”
“So that’s why he has a land line? For women.”
“He was single and he had no interest in long term. You changed that, Lauren. You know you did. You’re upset tonight. Don’t make this something it’s not.”
She didn’t know what she felt or what she thought. She only knew that everything was spinning out of control, that she had no control. She’d done what she’d never done in her life. She’d given it all away.
She pushed off the counter and walked towards him. “I’m going to my father’s house.” He blocked the exit. “Move, Blake. I’m sick of you Walker brothers pushing me around.”
“He is crazy about you.”
She wasn’t going to cry. She was not going to cry. Her chin lifted. “You can take me where I want to go or I can call a cab. Your choice.”
He scrubbed his hair. “Oh, well hell. He’s going to take my head for this, but I’ll take you.”
***
The first thing Lauren saw when they rounded the neighborhood corner were fire trucks, the next was her father’s house still looking normal and in one piece. She let out a breath of relief, especially since Blake had been desperately trying to warn Royce and Luke that they were on their way, and he couldn’t seem to reach either of them.
“It’s not on fire,” Lauren said, glancing at Blake.
“It’s contained,” Blake said. “That doesn’t mean it’s not on fire, or it wasn’t on fire.” He dropped his phone to the seat, and grumbled something about hanging Royce up by his toes. “Looks like several houses down is as close as we’re going to get with all the yellow tap.” He angled the Ranger to back in between two cars, and put the car in reverse, pausing to say, “I’ll go get Royce and bring him to”
Lauren shoved open the door, hopped out, and started running towards the house, the cool night air whipping through her hair and making her pull the jacket of her sweat suit closer to her body.
“Lauren!” Blake shouted.
She ignored him, cutting up a line of bushes to avoid the cluster of four official personnel not far away, and then ducking under the tape.
Blake shouted again, getting closer, and Lauren stepped up her pace, and charged towards the porch. She hit the first step, relieved that if there was any structural damage, it wasn’t significant enough to be seen from here.
She entered the front door, hearing Blake talking to someone behind her. She paused inside the foyer, seeing no obvious fire or damage, but the scent of smoke tainted the air, bitter proof there had been a fire. The sound of voices drew her to the left, towards her father’s den.
Her tennis shoes padded soundlessly over the carpet and she paused at the cracked door, some invisible force, instinct, telling her to wait, to listen. She eased around the edge of the door so that she could see into the room.
Royce was standing by the marble fireplace, Luke at the opposite side. Her father, and some man she didn’t recognize, sat in leather chairs framing the couch.
“I’m not going to keep this from her,” Royce said. “I’m done, Senator. This ends tonight.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” her father said, standing up. “When I hired you”
“I don’t work for you,” he said. ”I did you a favor because you saved my father’s life in Vietnam. The end.”
The words cut through Lauren and she acted immediately, shoving open the door and stepping inside, seeing only Royce. “Favor? I was a favor.”
“Lauren,” Royce said, taking a step towards her. “I can explain.”
“That’s a ‘yes,’” she said, humiliation and hurt pouring through her. She turned and started to run, bursting through the front door, rushing down the steps, and straight into the path of Blake. At the same moment, Royce’s hand was on her arm, shooting hot fire up her arm.
She whirled around to face him, jerking out of his grasp. “Don’t touch me. You don’t ever touch me again.”
“Let me explain. Please. Just hear me out.”
“You made a deal with my father,” she said. “You used sex and my feelings to get inside my life to do his bidding whatever the hell it was. There’s nothing you can say that I want to hear.”
“He asked me to check out a couple threats against your life and I agreed. And I would have told you but I saw you were in danger and I wasn’t going to risk you pushing me away.”
“So you thought you’d just fuck me into submission?”
“No,” he breathed out. “Damn it, no. This has been eating me alive. You had me at ‘hello,’ Lauren. Hell, you had me from across the room. I couldn’t, I can’t, let you push me away and end up dead. I won’t let that happen.”
“I’m not your concern. Not anymore.”
“This wasn’t a fire. It was a bomb, delivered in a package that said it was for you. It went off, sitting on a table in the dining room; thankfully when no one was around.”
She gasped. “Oh God. I... I can’t believe this is happening.” Luke stepped to Royce’s side. “Julie. I need to make sure Julie”
“I know,” Luke said. “Kyle tried to get her to my place. He’s taking her to a well secured hotel. Her choice.”
She nodded. “Okay. Yes.”
“And you’re coming home with me,” Royce said.
“No. I’m going to stay with Julie.”
“Staying with Julie makes her more of a target,” he said. “You have to see that.”
“The police have to know about this now,” she said. “I’ll talk to them. I’m sure they want to talk to me. I’ll get protection.”
He closed the distance between them and pulled her into his arms, his face buried in her neck, lips by her ear. “I swear to you, Lauren, that if you don’t leave here with me of your own free will, I will throw you over my shoulder and carry you out of here. Hate me if you have to but you’re going to be alive when this is over.”
She was trembling with his touch, with the warmth of his breath on her neck, with desire to turn back time and have him be who she’d thought he was. To have them be what she’d thought they were. “I can’t. I just... can’t.”
“She can stay at my place tonight,” Blake said from behind her. “Then you two can figure things out from there.”
Royce pulled back to look at her, his blue eyes hard with determination. “Choose. Me or Blake?”
“Blake.”
His chest expanded and then relaxed, before he took a step backwards. “We have to talk.”
“No. No, we don’t.” She turned to Blake. “Please get me out of here.”
His gaze lifted over her head to Royce’s and held a long moment before he stepped aside and waved her forward.
Once they were in the Ranger, darkness and silence was all there was, until finally, they pulled into the garage of their building and parked.
They sat there a moment, neither of them moving. “When I was in the ATF I fell in love with a woman, another agent.”
Shocked at his personal confession, she turned to look at him, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was clutching the steering wheel, staring at the concrete wall in front of them.
“Yes,” she said softly. “I... knew that.”
“So you know she was murdered.”
Her heart clenched. “Yes.”
His head jerked around, his gaze piercing hers, even in the darkness of the vehicle. “If Royce had asked me if he should have come clean with you, I wouldn’t have told him ‘no’ but ‘hell no’. You would have done what you did tonight. You would have pushed him away and made it damn near impossible for him to protect you. And you don’t take risks with someone’s life, especially not someone you care about the way he cares about you. You risk their anger, their inability to forgive you, but you don’t let them die.”
She could barely breathe with his words. “You blame yourself. You think you compromised on something that cost her life.”
“I know I did,” he said. “I let her die. He’s been a wreck, worried you would hate him, worried about protecting you. And that woman on the machine was nothing to him, Lauren. Nothing. You are. He has a past but so do you. We’re going upstairs and you aren’t staying with me. You’re staying with him. If you want to sleep in the guest room, then so be it, but you need to be with him, so you two can try and work this out.”
She started to cry, the second time in two days and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried before that. She hadn’t even cried when she’d found Roger in bed with his bimbo. Mad at her weakness, she swiped the tears, and shoved the door open.
Blake met her at the bed of the truck, and they walked in silence to the elevator and then the apartment. She waited for him to search the apartment, and then joined him. She stood inside the door, trying to decide what to do, unsure how she felt. No, she wasn’t unsure. She hurt. She hurt like she’d never hurt before.
Blake sat down on the couch and she walked into Royce’s room, ignoring the rumpled sheets and the spicy male scent of the man she knew she loved, the man she’d always known would break her heart, and gathered as many of her things as would fit in a bag. She needed space, she needed to think. She needed trust.
She walked out of the bedroom, heading to the spare room down a hallway to the left of the master. Blake was watching the news, and he didn’t look up, but when she was about to turn down the hall, the television went off.
“Lauren.”
She paused without turning. “I meant it when I said ‘what if’ destroys. It’s the bitch of all bitches. Don’t give her a chance to destroy you, or my brother.”