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There was the faintest memory of a demand. A demand for what, she wasn’t certain. It wasn’t even a memory, not really. It was a confusing collage of something, amid a blast of pain, fear, and her own screams.
“Did you remember the people next door who rushed in to help you?”
She didn’t remember the rescue at all.
“I remember meeting them at the hospital after I woke up.” She answered him, wishing she could hold on to whatever it was her attacker had said in those chaotic moments. She had a feeling if she could just remember . . .
“They were good boys,” he told her gently. “A lot of young men would have waited, or been too wary of poking their noses in where they weren’t wanted.”
“Oh, they were wanted.” She breathed out roughly.
God, what would she have done if they hadn’t poked their noses in?
Watching the landscape roll by, Piper realized they were only miles from the inn now.
“Do you think Dawg will be there?”
He was going to be so hurt, and she knew it. He wouldn’t understand her need to breathe, to have done this alone, even though it hadn’t been the chance she had believed it was.
“Why were you in New York, Piper?”
She’d wondered how long it would take him to get to the one question she knew he wanted to ask.
Forcing back tears of disappointment and humiliation, she let a bitter smile pull at her lips. “I thought I was going to get an offer for a showing of some of my designs,” she finally admitted.
“Thought you were?”
“It didn’t work out.” Staring down at her hands, she wondered whether he would consider it no more than she had deserved for the childishness she had displayed in the deceptive way she left.
“What happened, baby?”
The gentleness in his voice and the fact that he hadn’t told Dawg when the hospital had called him had her raising her eyes as she shifted in her seat to look at him.
Thank God it was dark. The last thing she wanted was for him to see the tears she had to blink back.
“There’s this famous designer sponsor,” she told him, clearing her throat to hide the hoarseness of the hurt she fought to hide. “He showcases several designers a year, helps them put on a show, and he’s never had one who didn’t become successful. I received a letter from him last week that he wanted to meet with me after seeing some of my designs that I sent in.”
He nodded, showing he was listening as they moved ever closer to the inn.
“I could have had the show and sponsorship if I’d agreed to be his little sex toy until he got tired of me.”
As though revealing that much opened a floodgate, Piper told him about Eldon Vessante, and the fact that his pants and his opinion of himself were overstuffed.
His expression never changed; the tension in his body didn’t visibly increase. None of the signs of vengeful anger that Dawg and her cousins were known to display were present.
“Two attacks in one day then.” He breathed out heavily, the concern in his voice easing something inside her she hadn’t known had been knotted with tension.
Piper nodded. “Fortunately, his butler or whoever he was, was there. Some guy named Broken or something. A hell of a name for a person. He kept Eldon from actually hitting me and helped me get away.”
“Do you think this Vessante guy was behind the attack at the hotel?”
Piper shook her head. “I don’t remember what was said, but he wanted something.” She wished she could remember, wished the harshly grated demand would come into focus within her memories. “I can’t remember what he said, Jed, or what he wanted, but it didn’t have anything to do with Eldon Vessante.”
Broecun.
Fuck.
The security field was a close-knit one, especially for those agents of John Broecun’s caliber. Jed knew Piper had taken the sound of the name literally, but Jed knew the other man, as well as the spelling of his name. And he knew if Broecun was with this Eldon Vessante, either the man was important to some very influential government types, or he was under investigation by them.
