“Because this house isn’t a courtroom filled with clients and peers. It’s your family home with your family inside, and if you are wrapped up in the betrayal your mother’s flaws make you feel, you will not see your father or brother clearly.” I swallow hard and force myself to say the words, to face the truth. “And now that I know the dangerous people your brother has involved your family with, Shane, I know, and so do you, that a misjudgment could be deadly.”
He stares at me, his gray eyes as unreadable as his expression: one beat, two, three. Then he gives me a small nod, and that is all I need. He hears me. He understands. No other words are needed. His arm slides around my waist again, and he sets us in motion, walking deeper into the foyer, into his family home, and toward what reaches well beyond a dreaded family get-together that someone else might wish to avoid. For in Shane’s case, in our case, we’re headed toward more than his blood. We’re headed toward people out for blood, one of whom has threatened my life tonight. And I’m not even ready to call him the most dangerous of the group. Or the most dangerous person in my life, or in Shane’s.
CHAPTER TWO
SHANE
Emily is an angel in the middle of hell, and as I walk her through the foyer, toward the dining room, I wonder if I’m not the same kind of devil my father is by keeping her by my side, the way he has my mother. And yet I keep walking, leading her deeper into the circle of fire that is my family, selfishly needing her light in this darkness. The taste of sweetness in all that is bitter. And when we reach the arched entryway to the dining area, I don’t even think about turning back. I lead her through it and into the rectangular sitting area, where Emily instantly halts, when this is the last place I want to linger.
“I love this space,” she announces as we both take in the high-backed brown leather chairs on either side of us, framing mini fireplaces capped by bookshelves. “It’s cozy and warm.”
Cozy and warm. I inhale on a description I’d simplified to “happy” in my youth, a place that reminds me of a family once connected, now ripped apart. “It’s the after-dinner coffee and reading room,” I say, eager to leave it at that, at least for tonight, but she breaks away from me, crossing to a bookshelf and running her hand over a row of books. “So many choices. History. Mystery.” She smiles. “Nora Roberts.”
“I have my parents to thank for being well-read. We were required to read an hour every night after dinner, and they took turns making our choices to ensure we were diverse in our interests.”
She turns to face me, her lovely eyes alight with interest in a past that humanizes people who are no longer human, a mistake I’d just made with my mother. I’d let her remain human, pure even, a fa?ade that left me open to the jolt of the letdown I should have long ago faced. “Fond memories?” she asks, stepping to me again.
My hand settles at her waist, and my answer is fast, clear. “Yes,” I say, and I’m not thinking of my family, but every moment I’ve spent with this woman. “Fond memories.” I don’t give her time to ask for further explanation, snagging her hips and walking her to me, my voice low, for her ears only as I promise, “In two hours you will be naked and next to me.” I cup her face and kiss her and then turn her toward the doorway leading to the dining room, or tonight’s circus event, allowing her to enter first but quickly joining her.
Almost immediately, I note that my parents are separated by the rectangular dark wooden table that now feels a mile long, each claiming the opposite head, though we’d once crowded on one end. Distant in ways that allowed Mike entry into my mother’s life, and I wonder now if my father regrets allowing this to happen or if she is simply property he refuses to claim.
“There are the lovebirds,” Derek says, from one of the high-backed red leather chairs facing us, several buttons of his white starched shirt open, his tie and jacket missing, his gray eyes so like mine, on Emily. “Tell me,” he adds, his attention moving back to me as Emily and I stop at the table, her at the chair next to my father, me by my mother. “Does this family dinner hint at a wedding?”
My irritation at him introducing a topic I wouldn’t dare discuss with Emily under present circumstances is as sharp and fast as Emily stiffening beside me. “If she survives the Addams Family dinner,” I reply dryly, “then I’d say she’s a keeper.”
“A wedding,” my mother exclaims, as if the Addams Family comment had not been made, but then I’m coming to realize my mother is a master of simply dismissing the bad and pretending everything is good. “That’s an interesting prospect,” she adds, motioning to me. “Let her sit next to me so I can get the details and do so quickly. The chef’s anxious to serve us.”
“The damn chef can wait,” my father snaps, never one for these family sit-downs, at least not for a good twenty years.
My mother snaps back at him, but it’s Derek and Emily I’m focused on. He’s staring at her, and she is boldly staring back at him, and I can see the spark in his eyes, his sharpening need to see her cower. “You should sit next to me, Emily,” he says. “If you’re going to marry my brother, we need to make peace.”
My irritation is turning to anger, but my father, the hero himself tonight, intervenes. “Give it up, boy,” he snaps at Derek. “You won’t intimidate her into leaving Shane, by sitting next to you, or agreeing with you. I sign her paycheck and she rarely does as I say. Hell. Shane beds the woman and I doubt he can control her.”
“David,” Maggie reprimands. “That’s uncalled for.”
“You aren’t there to protect her at work,” he says. “She doesn’t need protection now.” He fixes his bloodshot gray eyes on me. “Pick a spot and sit down before you have a confrontation with the egomaniac of a chef serving us tonight.”
Emily doesn’t look at me. I suspect it’s to ensure her decision is labeled as her own, or perhaps because all this wedding talk is flustering her, and how could it not? Whatever the case, she makes her move for the chair in front of her, and I quickly pull it out, guiding her to the table and allowing her to sit.
I’ve barely had time to claim my seat next to her when Derek goes after her again. “I guess you don’t want to get to know me better,” he says, sounding pleased with himself.
“Oh, I do,” she assures him, not missing a beat. “But I find the best way to do so is by looking a person in the face while you converse with them. Did you know that a person who is lying blinks a lot and makes unnatural eye contact?”
Her quick wit doesn’t surprise me, any more than her departure from the library at his threat. She is human and real, not a mold created by greed, but still she manages to bravely face all the things that come with that.
The amusement in Derek’s eyes deepens. “Did you know people who are rattled, or even scared, leave the room?”
“Did you know,” she counters, “that people who are reprimanded by their fathers, especially as adults, usually prefer privacy?”