Close Cover (Masters and Mercenaries #16)(59)

She couldn’t go back to work. She’d almost gotten Linc killed. And if she moved in with Will, she put them all in danger, including her nephew and Bridget and the baby in her belly. What the hell was she supposed to do?

She was supposed to do what her brother had taught her. She was supposed to do what was best for her family, even if it meant sacrificing her own happiness for a brief amount of time. It wouldn’t be forever. The other bodyguards would come back from their assignments eventually. She would be first on the list to get a new one. The investigators would figure out what was really happening and they would find a way to deal with it.

“I’ll go with Remy.” She had no idea how she would sit beside him, work next to him and not go crazy. Maybe she would catch up on her reading. Or her napping. She would nap a lot. “But I get my own room.”

Her brother’s whole body seemed to relax. “I’m sure we can arrange that. Lisa, you won’t regret it. I promise as soon as we can, we’ll bring you home. But you should think about forgiving him.”

“Or I could think about all the ways to twist a man’s balls off.” Forgiveness wasn’t a word she wanted to hear.

Will sighed and sat down on the bed. “Do you know what I put Bridget through?”

She’d heard the story. Most of it. “It’s not the same. You didn’t lie to her.”

“Oh, I did. She was looking for a date to her sister’s wedding. Amy’s first wedding, the fake one, was held in Hawaii, and Bridget needed a fake fiancé. Of course there was one man she refused to ask.”

She hadn’t heard this part. Bridget talked. Bridget talked a lot, but the really personal stuff, she kept close. “You? Was it because of me? I remember she thought you had three women coming in and out of your apartment at all times. She didn’t realize we were your sisters until much later. So she changed her mind when you told her the truth?”

“Well, I might have already put a plan in motion by that time. I didn’t realize what the problem was. I might have made deals with every Dom in Sanctum that not a one of them would say yes to her.”

Poor Bridget. “You asshole. She had to ask them. Do you have any idea how hard that is? Jerk.”

He chuckled. “It was not my proudest moment, and when she found out, she was pissed. Incredibly pissed, but she finally came around and gave me a chance.”

“It’s not the same.”

“Isn’t it? He took the first chance he had to be with you.”

“No, I gave him a chance. He turned me down.”

“We’re a rather intimidating family and he knew he wasn’t staying around. When he got close to you, he couldn’t resist. When he got to know the real you, he fell in love,” Will insisted.

“No, he saw how easy his hundred K could be. I can’t get in trouble if he’s on top of me.”

Will grimaced. “I thought that in the beginning, but then I heard what he said to you. I heard what he said and I recognized the look on his face because I had it on mine the night I begged Bridget not to give up on me.”

The hitch in her brother’s voice made her heart ache. “Oh, Will.”

He put a hand on hers. “We’re not smart. Men, I mean. We get a couple of scars on us and decide it makes more sense to shut down the softer part of our natures. We go into a relationship because we want sex and companionship and we’re happy when we have it. We don’t think to ask for more. You have to show him how to love you. That’s what he means when he asks you not to give up on him. He doesn’t know how to say he loves you, but he wants to.”

“He’s not you, Will.” For a moment she’d thought she’d found someone as awesome as her brother, but that was gone now.

“Oh, but sweetie, at heart we’re all the same. I promise to bring you back as soon as I can, but I think you should take this time with him to figure out if he’s what you want. He offered to pay the money back.”

But she knew how much he needed it. “Oh, no. I won’t go unless he’s getting paid and every single penny you promised him.”

“Going to use that as a shield, huh?” Will looked a bit disappointed, but she wasn’t backing down. “Just know that if you decide to give him a shot, Bridget and I would rather make it a wedding gift.”

“There’s not going to be a wedding. I promise I’ll be a good girl and behave, but I’m not touching that man again.” Because if she touched him, she would melt and she knew it. If she let him in again, she would become one of those doormat women who accepted less than she should. No. She’d been burned by that man twice.

He wasn’t getting a third chance.





Chapter Nine


Remy drove, his eyes on the road in front of him, but his brain was working overtime trying to figure out how to reach the woman next to him. Lisa was sitting not two feet away from him but she couldn’t be further away.

They were nine hours and forty-five minutes into a ten-hour drive. He’d tried to convince her to stop at a motel somewhere, but she’d put a quick kibosh on that. She wanted to get to Papillon, and then he had the feeling she was planning on going into her room and locking the rest of them out.

He’d tried everything he could think of to get her to talk, to find anything of the always-curious, lively Lisa he’d grown to love. The problem was he couldn’t figure out if it had been the kidnapping or he himself who’d sent her into the tailspin.