DONOVAN (Gray Wolf Security, #1)(11)

Kate continued through the room and up a narrow hall. I should have stayed in the living room, but I followed.

“That’s your room,” she said, gesturing to the first door on my right. “And the bathroom, obviously,” she said as she pointed to a door further up the hall on the left. Then she pushed through the door at the end of the hall, sighing as she went to the king-sized bed and threw herself onto it.

I stood in the doorway, taking in the heavy furniture, another television on the wall, and the tall windows that were darkened by black drapes. Again there were no adornments in this room. A couple of books on the bedside table. A few clothes scattered over the back of a very uncomfortable looking chair in the corner. The only personal touch seemed to be the generic treadmill in the corner.

But then there was one picture in this room. On the bedside table, nearly hidden by the books. It was a photograph I immediately recognized because I was the one who took it. It was a picture of her and Joshua with their arms around each other that I took a couple of weekends before graduation, before that night. They were laughing, staring into each other’s eyes with a sense of affection that you could only find in certain siblings. In twins.

Looking at that photo was like having someone reach in and tear a piece of my soul away.

“I’m safe in my own bedroom,” she said. “I think you can leave me alone now.”

It was almost a physical effort to pull my eyes from that picture. When I finally focused on her, I saw her glance back and look at the photo, too.

She sat up, her hand moving to her head as she did.

“I might have to put up with you following me around. I might even have to put up with living with you for a few days. But I don’t have to put up with you invading my personal space.” That glare was back, that look that held all the hatred I knew she felt for me. “Please leave the room.”

“Just so you know, if you try to sneak out the window, I will be alerted by the motion detectors our team set up. So I suggest you don’t try it.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

I studied her face for a second, some part of me unable to simply walk away. There was something about looking at her that was like coming home. Like I’d finally come full circle in my life. Logically, I knew nothing had changed. I knew she would never forgive me for what she thought I failed to do the night her brother received the injuries that killed him. I knew that, even though the boys who actually delivered the blows were serving their time in jail, she believed I’d gotten away with something. But being here with her, standing in her home, offered me some sort of hope that I had been afraid to seek.

Her eyes narrowed and she waved her fingers. “Go away.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I turned, pulled the door closed behind me.

Time to get to work.





Chapter 6


Kate

I didn’t like to think I was prone to temper tantrums anymore. But I felt like screaming into my pillow and flaying my legs a little, like I might have done when I was a toddler. I didn’t want him here. Just looking at him brought back so many memories that I had finally come to terms with, that I had finally left behind me. Maybe if he didn’t look so good, if he didn’t look so much like he had back then…but better. Buffer. More masculine.

I’d thought Ash was good looking, but he really had nothing on Donovan.

When I knew him, his dirty blond hair was long, inclined to curl at the bottom. And those blue eyes? There was so much depth to them that you could never really know what he was thinking. I remember watching him from across a classroom, from across my own living room, wondering what it was that went on in that funny head of his. He was always the class clown, seeking attention where it wasn’t necessarily a positive thing. Polite as all hell around my dad, but wild and crazy at school, always pulling pranks on people, always the bad boy all the girls drooled over. And I mean literally drool. I remember the way the girls on the cheerleading squad used to talk about him. Half of them wanted to sleep with him. The other half wanted to marry him.

But that was high school.

Now he was quieter. More cautious. I could see it in the way his eyes moved around a room. Just like Ash, he was constantly looking for an exit, a threat. What would that be like, always watching for the next fight? It couldn’t be very conducive to relaxation.

Not that I cared. He was the one who ran away to join the Army. He was the one who disappeared when everyone was still reeling from losing Joshua. He was the one who was a coward and couldn’t face what it was he’d done.

My head was pounding. I sat up and the movement made the room spin a little. But when it settled down, I got up and made my way to the bathroom. I needed a shower. I needed to get the smell of that damn hospital off my skin.

It reminded me too much of that day. It reminded me of the last time I spoke to Donovan.

“He’s dead!” I screamed as I approached him in the hallway of the hospital, just outside the ICU where my brother had spent the last twenty-four hours fighting for his life. I kissed my brother’s lifeless cheek goodbye and left the room, stepped out into the waiting room, and his was the first face I saw.

“He’s dead.”

I saw the grief in Donovan’s eyes, saw the pain slice his expression in half. But it didn’t really register through the shock that held me prisoner.