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“Em,” Lana said with a happy but sleep-fuzzed tone. “Where are you? Yes, I’m fine. Laird told me about what happened and I’ve been worried sick.”
“I’m fine but what about you?” she asked. “Is Laird treating you right? You can tell me if he isn’t.”
“Laird is…very nice,” Lana answered, almost sheepishly. “He’s been very kind and sweet.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, Em. Don’t worry about me.”
“Vince and his brothers are working to figure out who did this to the both of us so it shouldn’t be too much longer.” Emma shot Vince a look that said, I’m lying through my teeth for you so don’t fuck up, and he felt a certain amount of pleasure that she was putting her faith in him to solve the problem. “Listen, sit tight and I’ll come get you soon. Okay?”
“I’m good, Em. Stop worrying about me. Laird is unlike any man I’ve ever met. And that’s a good thing.”
Emma looked ready to quip, don’t get attached, but Vince was surprised when she swallowed it and said, “I love you, Lana. I’ll be in touch.”
“Love you, too, Em.”
When the line clicked off, Emma returned the phone with a speculative expression. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “I thought you’d feel better knowing she was okay.”
“I do feel better. There was something about her tone. She sounds…I don’t know…almost as if she likes Laird.”
“Why is that strange? Laird is a good guy.”
“Yeah but Lana has had difficulty being around strangers since the incident. But she sounded…secure.”
Vince considered that and realized Laird had been pretty protective over his new charge. He wondered if there was something going on between the two. Vince suppressed an annoyed sigh at the idea of those two hooking up but he supposed it was better than complete animosity. “So…feel better?” he asked Emma, almost anxiously. He really didn’t want her to worry about her sister needlessly. They had bigger issues to work through.
Emma’s mouth turned up in a warm, relieved smile and his heart skipped a beat. “Much,” she answered and started walking again, only this time, her step seemed much lighter and for that he was inordinately relieved.
Well, hell, he thought. Maybe he should’ve done that in the first place. Hindsight and all that…
But as they climbed into the car, Vince realized Emma’s mind was still moving fast as her pensive expression filled him with apprehension. He had a terrible feeling that whatever Penny had filled Emma’s head with was bound to kick him in the ass later.
As it would turn out, later wasn’t too far behind.
-13-
“Who is Isabel?” Emma asked, once they were back at the penthouse. Penny’s frank conversation had blown her mind but the questions it’d created were overriding her sense of whoa! and now that she knew Lana was safe, she wanted answers that only Vince could give.
Vince cut her a sharp look. “No one I want to talk about.” He grabbed a bottle of ibuprofen and shook out a few. “Here, take these.”
Emma accepted the pills and tossed them back with a glass of water but she wasn’t going to let her question go unanswered. “Who is Isabel?” she repeated.
“Where is this coming from?” Vince asked, glowering. “I already said I didn’t want to talk about it. Besides, it’s none of your business who Isabel was.”
“Was?” Emma picked up immediately on the past tense. “What do you mean, was?”
“What do you think? She’s dead.”
“What happened?”
“What is wrong with you? Are you deaf?” He thundered at her, glaring hard. “I don’t want to talk about her.”
“Penny seemed to think that she mattered to you.”
“Penny ought to keep her mouth shut about shit that doesn’t involve her,” he muttered.
“Maybe but she told me plenty and I want some answers. Start talking.”
“I don’t take well to being ordered around,” he warned but she wasn’t scared. In fact, she felt emboldened like never before. She was like a hound on a scent and she wasn’t going to let him off the hook until he spilled his guts. Emma had the sense that it was important that she stay on him no matter how hard he tried to shake her off, so that’s what she was going to do.
“And I don’t take well to being pulled and pushed around either. Guess that makes us evenly matched, wouldn’t you say?” Vince’s expression reminded Emma of a trapped man, up against impossible odds and she knew whatever Vince was protecting was very tender. “I’m beginning to realize that all the research I did on your family didn’t even scratch the surface of who you are. Tell me who she was to you.”
“Why do you care?” he asked, almost bitterly but before she could answer he said, “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”
She took a risk and walked to him, caressing his face tenderly even though she knew he might rebuff her kindness and said, “I want to know.”
Vince squeezed his eyes shut at her touch and she felt the minute tremble coursing through his body. Such pain, she thought with sadness. Whoever Isabel was, she’d left a lasting wound that’d never healed. That was one helluva legacy to leave behind. Emma pulled Vince to her, pressing her lips against his in a feather light touch that ignited his desire and he crushed her to him, as if unable to get enough. After a long moment, he said, “If I told you, you’d never look at me the same again,” the anguish in his tone unable to mistake. Her heart went out to him, wondering what could be so bad that even Vince wouldn’t admit to it.
“Tell me,” she whispered, holding him tight. “Please…”
“Why?”
“Because I need to know what happened to you, what made you so hard. You like to say that you’re a bad man but your actions say otherwise. I realize now that you’ve been protecting me this whole time and don’t try to deny it. I was too angry to see it until Penny brought it up. You could’ve handed me off to a myriad of handlers at your disposal but you brought me here — to your place — why would you do that for a total stranger unless you felt something for them?”
Vince groaned and pushed her away, shoving his hand through his hair in agitation. “Damn it, Emma. Don’t try to make me into some hero that I’m not. I didn’t do it for any other reason aside from protecting Malvagio. Everything I do has an ulterior motive. Know that now and you might not get hurt. I do nothing that won’t benefit me somewhere down the road. Okay?”
Emma blinked at the pain his statement caused but even though her immediate reaction was to recoil she saw through his bluster to the raw pain pulsing beneath. Anyone who would fight so hard to hide something so personal must feel fairly strongly about it. She believed Penny was right. Vince tried so desperately to be bad but he was a good man and for whatever reasons, he didn’t want to ad
mit it. She followed Vince into the bedroom, not willing to back down — though why, she wasn’t sure. Maybe she was crazy, but there was something about Vince that made her pulse race and her body tingle with awareness and the insane chemistry was addictive. “You made it sound as if you went and got Lana to manipulate me but in reality, you were making it so I didn’t have to worry about her. You put her with your friend Laird, knowing that he would take care of her. Everything you’ve done has been the opposite of a man just looking out for his best interests and I call bullshit on your protests.”
“Don’t do this, Emma,” Vince said. “You’re going to end up hurt when you realize you’re wrong.”
“I’m not wrong,” she said, stepping forward, crowding his space, forcing him to meet her gaze. “Tell me who was Isabel and what did she do to you?”
#
Vince stared, unable to believe this half-pint of a woman was pushing him to the point no other woman ever had. He ought to throw her out on her ass, that would show her that he was no good guy but even as his mind urged him to do it, he stood there immobilized by the arresting surety in her blue eyes. She didn’t falter or quail at his fierce scowl or mean glare. Nor did she cry when he yelled. No, not Emma. She pushed and yelled back. If he weren’t so twisted up in knots over what was happening, he would’ve thrown her to the bed and screwed her senseless because she was so damn sexy. But he couldn’t. Isabel’s presence, no matter how hard he tried pushing her away, stood between him and sanity. Except now Emma was there, too.
Each time he thought, if even for a heartbeat, that he might want to find someone to settle down with, have kids, be somewhat normal, Isabel haunted his dreams, reminding him that he didn’t deserve the comforts of normal.
And it was happening again. He felt something powerful and real with Emma — and he couldn’t let that happen. Subconsciously, he must’ve sensed it from the moment he laid eyes on her because he’d been seized with an irrational urge to protect and possess her, which went against everything he’d been about up until that point. Emma spoke to him at a cellular level, no matter that they’d known each other for such a short time, he could feel it in his pulse, the way her skin electrified his fingertips and how the sound of her breathy moans unlocked a door he’d been too afraid to open. Emma was everything he knew he couldn’t have — didn’t deserve.
