Secret Pleasure Read online

  And through it all, every day of every second apart from her, Shane had sworn he could feel her tears, could feel her reaching out for him. The confusion, the hurt, the feelings of betrayal all made sense now, though it had taken years to begin to understand it. And only in the past days were the full ramifications of it making sense.

  As he was lost in his thoughts, it took the slam of the office door to shatter them and have him swinging around to meet Senator Hampstead’s furious gaze.

  Davis Allen was enraged. A scowl marked his expression; his normally light gray eyes were dark, the color shifting like thunderclouds building to a storm. The dark blond hair, cut to a conservative length, wasn’t as neat as normal, and the moment he saw Sebastian and Shane he looked ready to explode.

  “Davis.” Moving from the sofa where she’d sat, Landra rushed to her lover, causing him to pause to embrace her as she whispered something at his ear.

  Whatever it was, it didn’t ease the look of fury, but at least he wasn’t glaring specifically at them anymore.

  “The doctors are still in with her,” Landra told Davis as they began moving the last few feet to where Shane and Sebastian stood at the French doors, just a few feet from the door leading to Alyssa’s suite. “She struck her head. I heard Dr. Brennan mention leaving the nurse to make certain she rests for the next forty-eight hours. He’s certain she’s concussed.”

  “Don’t bet on that,” the father snorted doubtfully. “I have yet to know of Alyssa listening to the doctor’s advice.”

  Sebastian turned his gaze back to the other man suspiciously. “She requires medical care often?” he asked carefully.

  Alyssa’s father spoke as though from much experience with having her treated by the doctor.

  “You can shutter that look right now, young man,” the senator demanded, obviously less than pleased. “Alyssa’s had no more accidents than any other young woman with her reckless tendencies. She climbs ladders in pumps when she knows better without anyone close by in case she falls. If a ladder’s not handy she’ll climb up on a desk, a chair—”

  “A table, or a windowsill,” Shane muttered, pushing his fingers through his hair as he shot his cousin an exasperated look. “And here you said she’d stop being so foolish when she got older.”

  Sebastian shrugged easily.

  “When she grew up?” the senator suggested, his voice heavily laced with warning sarcasm. “Is that what you meant?”

  “Davis, you promised,” Landra reminded him gently.

  “Then make them promise not to rub my nose in what they did to my daughter!” he snapped. “I had enough of seeing that child hurt the night I walked into her living room and found her bleeding to death from the knife shoved in her side.”

  Khalid’s muttered, furious curse was low but heard. How the hell any of this was his business Shane couldn’t figure out. For some reason, Mustafa was taking an inordinate amount of interest in Alyssa’s past. According to Sebastian, his nosiness was only getting worse.

  “Davis, now isn’t the place,” Landra whispered, her gaze flickering to the group Khalid stood with.

  Grimacing, the senator reined in his fury. “Ian.” He nodded to the other man. “Thank you for helping her. You know how stubborn she can be.” He wiped his hand over his face tiredly. “What the hell happened anyway?”

  “Someone tried to run her down in the street,” Landra said, fingers tightened on Davis’ arm, before Ian had a chance to speak. “It was horrible, Davis. It was all caught on one of those cameras Khalid’s bodyguard was wearing. The SUV was racing for Alyssa. I’m certain it would have hit her. Then suddenly Shane did this little flying thing.” Her hand gave a whirl as she stared at the senator. “And he had his arms around her, throwing both of them clear of the vehicle. Then it turned to attempt to run her down again.” Brown eyes wide, her black hair a soft cloud around her face, and her expression animated, Sebastian watched the senator stare down at her as though mesmerized. “Khalid’s body guards drew their weapons and the driver sped away instead.” She gave a little shudder. “Of course, Alyssa was cursing Shane for carrying her into the house, once they arrived here. And everyone was just rushing in behind him.” Her amusement was clear. “The poor thing. She’s very upset that anyone witnessed what happened.”

  Everyone watched her with the same interest they had watched the video the bodyguard had taken when Khalid played it for them. Her son, Jeb, tilted his head thoughtfully, and glanced at the senator. “She’s my mother and she makes me feel very old. Do you ever have that problem?”

  “Give her time,” Davis snorted. “Though I suspect Alyssa will see me in my grave before too much longer. The last time Dr. Brennan was here she’d fallen from the desk in her office while trying to change a lightbulb. My chief of staff was furious, certain she’d broken her leg.” He rubbed at his head with both hands for a second. “She only twisted her ankle, bruised her shin, and strained the tendon beneath her knee.” He looked slightly confused. “I think the broken leg might have been less complicated and actually kept her out of trouble longer.”

  “Davis was quite put out with her,” Landra stated as the senator rubbed his hand absently over the fingers tucked in the opposite arm. “Two weeks later, his chief of staff, a lovely young man he calls Raeg, found her balancing at the edge of the windowsill in the conference room attempting to clean the ledge over them. The windows are actually taller than her.”

  “She’s going to worry me into a stroke,” Davis predicted, glancing at the door to her room once again before glaring back at him and Shane, his expression darkening again with anger. “The two of you should leave—”

  “No, sir.” They spoke at once.

  “Oh dear,” Landra whispered, her eyes rounding at the phenomenon. “Davis, shall we discuss this later, when we’re not all so upset? Perhaps after we know Alyssa’s doing well?”

  He wasn’t upset, Sebastian thought, staring back at the senator in determination. He simply had no intention of going anywhere, anymore than Shane did.

  “You’ll destroy her,” Davis accused them, his gaze filled with grief. “God help me, I feel like all that child’s done is fight to live since she returned from Spain. Because of the two of you.”

  “Senator, whatever you might think you know about her relationship with us—”

  “Relationship?” he growled, his gray eyes, so like his daughter’s, darkening dangerously. “An eighteen-year-old child doesn’t have a relationship with two twenty-four-year-old men before she’s even had her first real date.”

  From the corners of his eyes Shane glimpsed the dark look Khalid shot him and Sebastian. Just what he needed, that son of a bitch to hear his business and draw his own conclusions.

  “The two of you shattered her,” he accused them. “And now, the minute you show up in her life again, someone’s trying to kill her. You should step away from her now, before there’s nothing left of her but a gravestone.”

  Like hell they would step away from her.

  “We took that advice the first time it was given,” Shane reminded him with a sneer. “It hasn’t worked out well for any of us. I’ll be damned if I’ll trust it again. This time, we’ll face whatever the hell is going on together. We’ll stand with her. And she’ll stand with us. No one will separate us again.”

  18

  Shane and Sebastian were confusion and chaos.

  Alyssa had made that claim, albeit laughingly, in Spain. She wasn’t laughing forty-eight hours and some odd minutes later when Nurse Lisa Shaw pushed her electronic pad into her purse, gave a cheery wave, and stepped from the sitting room into the office beyond.

  Forty-eight hours of that woman watching her with eagle eyes, refusing to let her do more than lie on the couch rather than in the bed. No work, no laptop, no e-pad, no news on the television. Quiet, rest.

  She hated just lying around. It gave her far too much time to think and to remember. She’d learned years ago to stay busy. Put one foot in front
of the other and push back as many memories as possible.

  And she was learning how to do it, she assured herself. She wasn’t perfect, but she’d been learning, until Barcelona decided to visit Alexandria.

  She was kicking Shane’s and Sebastian’s asses first chance she had, dammit.

  “Thank God she’s gone.” The door Nurse Shaw had exited through opened again and Alyssa’s father slid inside as though he were still sneaking past the prison guard of a nurse. “I’m convinced that woman missed a hell of a career as a dragon trainer.”

  Dressed in a white shirt, sleeves rolled back, perfectly creased slacks, and his favorite leather shoes, her father took a seat in the chair across from her while giving her one of his quiet smiles and far too perceptive looks.

  “Bitching about your best buddy, Father?” she finally accused him, glowering as she flipped the blanket the nurse insisted she keep on her legs. “Shame on you.”

  His lips tilted in a small grin, his expression becoming playful. “Playing with SUVs in the street, sweetheart? Shame on you, I thought I taught you better.”

  Swinging her legs to the floor, Alyssa blew out a hard breath. She heard that little undertone in his voice. The one that assured her he wasn’t as calm and relaxed as he appeared to be.

  “You did teach me better, Dad,” she said, shaking her head at the hazy memory of that damned SUV bearing down on her. “It just doesn’t stop, does it?”

  How many more near misses was she going to survive?

  “If you were a cat, I’d start worrying,” he admitted before his lips tilted in an ironic grin. “Hell, you passed a cat’s lives when you were ten. Between your own reckless nature and those two men, there’s not going to be much left of you in another six months or so.”

  She rolled her eyes at the comment concerning her recklessness. She wasn’t reckless at all. Things just seemed to happen, that was all.

  As for Shane and Sebastian, well, they just kind of seemed to happen as well. At the most inopportune times.

  “They do have a way of completely screwing up a plan,” she admitted.

  “Not to mention your life,” he injected, watching her closely.

  “I wasn’t exactly living, though, was I, Dad,” she admitted then. She felt as though she’d been sleepwalking until the night Sebastian found her in the arbor.

  “You were at peace.” His expression darkened for a moment before he shook his head and leaned forward to brace his elbows on his knees. “Were you at peace, Alyssa? The last two years you seemed to be.”

  The concern in her father’s expression had guilt tightening in her stomach. Shane and Sebastian weren’t going to let her go easily. And she couldn’t answer the question of whether she wanted to be let go. Even to herself.

  “At peace,” she murmured, pushing her hair back behind her shoulder as she stared at the floor. “I was resigned.” Looking up at him, she gave him the only answer she had. “Is that the same thing?”

  It wouldn’t have lasted long, Alyssa knew. She wasn’t the resigned sort.

  “You’re alive now.” He grimaced, sitting back in the chair as his brows lowered broodingly. “You haven’t been alive for a long time. And I’m terrified that I’ll see you dead before it’s over with. Something’s shadowing those two men and it keeps lashing out at you. One day, you may not be so lucky in your escape.”

  Rising to her feet, Alyssa walked to the wide bay window with its pillowed window seat on the other side of the sitting room. Her father hadn’t questioned a single renovation she wanted for her suite of rooms after she lost the baby. He’d done everything just as she wanted it. For eight years, he’d done everything he could to ensure not just her happiness but also her safety.

  “Whatever’s shadowing them has always shadowed me anyway,” she finally reminded him. “Someone killed my baby, Dad. And I’ve never been convinced Harvey tried to kill me just because he found out about Shane and Sebastian. We don’t know how he found out, or what he was involved in. But the timing in relation to Shane and Sebastian identifying Gregory Santiago as the blackmailer bothers me.”

  It bothered her a lot.

  Gregory had been a bit arrogant, she remembered, and he hadn’t appeared to care much for Shane and Sebastian, though he’d never said why. Not that she had asked, either. Most of her time had been spent with her lovers rather than her neighbors. Just as her neighbors did. They were all there for the summer and determined to live their vacations to the fullest.

  Alyssa hadn’t even known who lived in the apartment beneath Gia. Gregory and Marissa lived beneath her and Gia across from her.

  “Do you remember much of what Harvey said that night?” her father asked. “Is it possible he was somehow involved in all this?”

  “He said it would have been amusing if the baby had lived. He could have raised their son, and he found that hilarious. But he hadn’t known about Shane and Sebastian until recently is the impression I have.” Turning back to her father, she met his gaze helplessly. “But hell, what do I know? I thought Harvey had changed in the past few years we were together, but he assured me every reason he gave for needing to marry me was a lie anyway. So maybe he hadn’t changed. Maybe that was who he was all along.”

  He’d been telling her since they were sixteen that his father would have him beaten for being gay. After she returned from Spain he’d confided to her that he had to marry before his father killed him. The last time, weeks before they married, Harvey had shown up with a blackened, swollen eye and fractured wrist. He’d begged Alyssa to marry him. She was pregnant, he’d pointed out desperately. No one knew, but she couldn’t hide it forever. He’d give her baby his name; she would get his dad off his ass.

  And she’d agreed. Evidently she’d agreed to lies, though.

  “Your mother hated him,” her father revealed. “She made him believe she was his ally, though. So much so that when he tried to kill you she actually convinced him she was going to help him.”

  She had helped him all right. She’d killed him. But she’d killed herself as well.

  “Mom was the most intuitive, calculating, manipulating person I have ever met in my life.” She smiled, remembering how her mother would instruct her after each instance when she’d watched her mother play her political and social games.

  “Yes, she was.” Fondness still filled Alyssa’s father’s voice. “She drove me insane every day of the week, but she could maneuver people like no one I knew.”

  She wouldn’t have maneuvered Shane and Sebastian for long, though, Alyssa thought. They would have let Margot think she was doing it, according to how much they wanted to stay on friendly terms with her. But they would have seen through her easily.

  She met her father’s gaze slowly, saw the knowledge in his eyes, the acceptance and the love that had sheltered her all her life.

  “I loved them until it destroyed parts of me that I’ll never recover. To survive, I had to shut so many parts of myself down that I’m afraid they’re dead as well. Now they’re back, the danger is gone, and they want to pick up where we left off.” Alyssa shook her head wearily. “And I don’t know if there’s enough of me left to trust any part of the fantasy they’re spinning for me.”

  “You think it’s a lie?” Her father seemed surprised.

  “To them?” she asked, then shook her head as she walked back to the couch and sat down heavily. “No, Dad, I don’t think they see it as a lie or a fantasy. That’s how I see it. It was a fantasy the first time. Who’s to say it’s anything more than a fantasy now?”

  Sitting back, his elbow propped on the arm of the chair, he rubbed at the flesh over his lip as he considered her thoughtfully. “You don’t trust them, do you, honey?”

  “They should have told me.” That regret was like a sickness she couldn’t hold back. “All those years, Dad, and I was left to face a betrayal that didn’t happen. My soul was ripped from me and they could have stopped some of the pain. And they want me to trust them now. How do I do
that?”

  They hadn’t told her about the blackmail and they hadn’t told her that they were trying to protect her. They’d just left, thinking she would be there when they came for her.

  “Men do what they think they have to,” he sighed heavily, pushing himself from the chair, his expression heavy, if a bit rueful. “Strong men take the weight of the world on their shoulders and never question if it’s their responsibility or their right. They take it, because they can’t bear the consequences otherwise.” Walking to her, he gripped her shoulders before bending his head to kiss the top of her head. “Perhaps they should have told you,” he said softly. “But what would you have done if they had? If you had learned of the thousands of dollars per month they were paying to protect you, to keep those pictures from public eyes? To hold forever private the sight of the woman they love amid her pleasure? What would you have done if they had told you, Alyssa?”

  “You’re defending them?” she asked, amazed that he would do so. After the party he had refused to even discuss their presence in town.

  “Defending them?” Stepping back, he shook his graying head slowly. “I’m not defending them, sweetheart. Let’s say, I hate what they did to you. Hate them for it. But I like to be honest with myself.” Shoving his hands in the pockets of his slacks, her father grimaced tightly. “And honestly, Alyssa, in their position, unaware of what you were suffering, believing they were protecting you from the evil threatening you, I would have done the same damned thing.”

  He would have done the same thing?

  Wonderful.

  So she was supposed to just forgive them because her father agreed with the choices they’d made? She didn’t think so. They had let some nameless, faceless blackmailer keep them from her for years, but what about the last two?

  They were blaming Summer for it.

  There was always a reason, always an excuse.

  Alyssa didn’t want to hear any more excuses. She didn’t want to know the cousins’ reasons or their excuses. She might not have been happy without them in her life, and she might not have been content. Resignation had sucked, though.