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Keeping her voice low, Margot told her what had happened. From the arrival of the pictures to the loss of the baby Alyssa had carried. A baby she’d been forced to bury before she’d ever heard his first cry or seen him open his eyes. A little boy with black hair tipped in blond. “A headful of it,” Margot sobbed at the mention of it.
“Who?” Summer asked again. “Who did this to her?”
Margot shook her head. “She made me swear, Summer. I swore I wouldn’t tell you. I swore I wouldn’t allow them to be harmed. Then she slipped and married Harvey Stanhope to make certain no one else suspected who the child belonged to.”
Summer stepped closer, her eyes narrowing. “Who?”
Margot should know the lengths she’d go to in protecting Alyssa.
“She has the pictures hidden in her bedroom,” Margot revealed. “Probably in that fucking hole in her closet that she called a wish box when she was a child. Look there first.”
Summer looked there.
As she drew the pictures free her eyes widened in shock.
They had done this to Alyssa? Shane Connor and Sebastian De Loren? But that made no sense.
The pictures didn’t lie, though. Alyssa’s face was suffused in pleasure and love, and their faces, their expressions, were cut in the same emotions. What Summer saw in their eyes wasn’t
the cold calculation of the men that Margot had seen. These were men who had loved.
Replacing the pictures, she sat back on her heels, her eyes narrowed. She’d overheard something at the De La Cruz home she’d stayed in. Something about the two CIA couriers and a loss that had destroyed them.
What the hell was going on?
What had they done to her friend to steal the life, the love that had shone so bright in clear eyes that were now dull and all but dead? What had they done, and how did she find a way to kill them for it?
9
SIX YEARS LATER
Stepping into the house she had moved into with Harvey Stanhope five years before, Alyssa stared around the pristine, far too opulent D.C. home his father had purchased for them.
How ecstatic Marion Stanhope had been when she and Harvey had married. Certain his son was turning over a new leaf, as his father called it, and giving up his depravities. The judgmental bastard. He’d been furious when he’d learned his son was gay. So furious he’d beaten Harvey to the point that when he showed up on the Hampstead doorstep he’d nearly been dead.
He had been her friend at one time. He and Summer had been the only friends she’d really had when she was younger. Summer had remained, but Harvey had followed his own pursuits until she’d returned from Barcelona.
He’d begged her to marry him even before he’d learned of the baby. Begged her to give him just a few years of peace from the beatings to enable him to find a way to make it stop. Against her mother’s arguments, she’d married him.
For her baby. To ensure Shane and Sebastian knew she had no intentions of asking them for anything. That she would raise her child without them.
That was six years ago. It seemed a lifetime ago. They’d been each other’s shields, so Alyssa had allowed the marriage to stand. The platonic relationship had given them both a chance to recover in some ways. Except something had changed.
It had been slow. A subtle contempt she’d felt at odd times. An anger that had begun building in the past years. And she’d had enough of it. She’d had enough of a lot of things, though. The political machinations, her sterile life, the dreams that haunted her until she thought they’d drive her insane.
Taking the staircase to the second floor, she entered her private suite and, collecting fresh clothing, entered the bathroom. Her return from England had left her exhausted but unwilling to remain in the house with Harvey. Before leaving he’d been a little erratic. Just enough to begin worrying her. Just enough to make her start looking into certain things. Things like her personal checking and savings and the huge amount taken out in the last month. The money was hers. Her income for the past years working as her parent’s social director and he’d forged her signature to her checks and stolen it. The bastard. She’d been saving for a reason, and it wasn’t so Harvey could steal it all.
She’d called her father on her way home and told him she’d be returning later that night. She just needed to pack a bag and wash the stench of the flight from her body.
Once the divorce was final she intended to leave for Pennsylvania and the house her grandparents had left her next to a gorgeous mountain lake. The house she’d once dreamed of living in with a husband, a houseful of children.
That dream was forever dead. After six years she’d accepted the fact that something vital inside her was dead as well. Shane and Sebastian had so destroyed her that once she’d lost the baby there had been nothing left for another man. No desire left for more children.
She, who had dreamed of a house filled with children, would die childless. How ironic was that?
And there was no way to revive those dreams. She’d tried. God knew she had, but she’d failed. Just as she’d failed at so many other dreams she’d had before that summer in Barcelona. Before she’d given every part of herself to two men. She should have seen the writing on the wall there, she thought painfully. Two men willing to share her? As Summer said once, where was the love?
Not that Alyssa had ever made herself fully believe that there had been no love. She’d tried. It wasn’t as though there wasn’t enough proof. There was. But believing it … if she believed it, she wouldn’t still dream of them or awake with the feel of their arms and their warmth surrounding her.
