Safe at Last (Slow Burn #3)

“I’m so sorry, Wade,” she said in a rush. “But I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to display the last painting. I just . . . can’t.”


The pain on her beautiful features was clearly evident. Her eyes were haunted by ghosts of the past. Ghosts that mirrored Zack’s own. Because he was staring at one right this very moment.

He finally managed to rip himself from the stupor enveloping him and force the single, choked word from his mouth, his entire mind quaking with disbelief.

“Gracie?”





FIVE


GRACIE’S head snapped up, obviously seeing Zack for the first time after she’d burst through the doors in her haste to recant the agreement to hang the painting Cheryl was still clutching nervously.

Her gaze was horror-stricken and her face was deathly pale. Utter terror was reflected in her wide brown eyes.

She immediately started backstepping, turning as if to flee, and she would have if Sterling hadn’t made a grab for her arm to prevent her from falling. As it was, she slipped from Sterling’s grasp, sprawling onto her backside on the marble floor, and still, she pushed herself backward, her body language signaling horrific fear as she frantically tried to escape.

Zack stepped forward, unbelieving. God. This was his dream come to life and she was running from him? Looking at him like he was a goddamn monster? What the fuck was going on?

“Gracie,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion. “My God, Gracie, I thought you were dead! All these years. You can’t imagine . . .”

He never got to finish his statement because her expression grew even more horror stricken—if such a thing were possible. Tears filled her eyes and devastation bathed her entire face. Gut-wrenching, terrible grief, betrayal and heartbreak. All the things he himself was feeling and had felt for more than a decade.

“You meant for them to kill me too?” she choked out, her words so garbled and panic-stricken that he nearly didn’t comprehend them. But he heard every one and it only increased his bewilderment a hundred times more. Kill her? This was his dream turned worst nightmare of his entire life.

“What are you talking about?” he demanded. “Who are you talking about? Who tried to kill you?” Didn’t she know that he’d take apart anyone who ever tried to harm her? That there was nothing he wouldn’t do to protect her? Had she had no faith in him at all? Had their time together meant nothing at all?

He was about to explode with the need for answers. A million questions were in his mind demanding to burst free. But his primary desire was simply to touch her. Hold her. Confirm to himself that he wasn’t dreaming. That this wasn’t some morbid fantasy, a manifestation of years of wishful thinking taunting him so soon after his vow to put it all behind him.

Wade gently picked her up but then forcefully put her behind him. He wrapped his arm behind him to secure her solidly to his back, a barrier between her and everyone else in the room and especially Zack, whom he had pinned with a murderous glare that promised violence and retribution.

“Get the hell away from her,” Zack barked. “Now.”

He didn’t want this man so much as touching her. Thinking to protect her from Zack? This guy had shady written all over him. What the ever-loving hell was Gracie’s association with Sterling and why was there possessiveness written all over the other man’s face? As if Gracie belonged to him, was his to protect when she’d always been Zack’s. But then maybe . . . God, he couldn’t—wouldn’t—go there. His sanity was already hanging by the barest thread and he was precariously close to losing all semblance of control, he who was always in control, his emotions always tightly in check.

Gracie let out an inarticulate sound of fear and even with her behind Wade it was apparent she was in full meltdown. Wade turned to his assistant, allowing Zack a brief glance at Gracie, whose face was red and swollen, tears streaking down her cheeks and so terrified that it broke Zack’s fucking heart.

Beau intercepted Zack, putting his hand on Zack’s shoulder.

“You need to back off, man,” he said in a low voice. “Look at her. Is that what you want to do to a woman ever?”

Eliza was at his other side, her arm curled around his arm, obviously in support, but so too was her sympathy for Gracie evident in her eyes, her features as stricken as Gracie’s own.

Gracie’s fear and distress was palpable in the room. No one was unaffected, least of all Zack. But why was she afraid of him? It made no goddamn sense! The world had gone crazy around him and he needed answers. The longer he went without them, the more insane it was driving at him, eating at his very soul until he was about to go mad with it.