Page 35 of Nightfire

He couldn’t even look at his brothers. They flanked him silently in a sign of support as they marched down the corridor, but they looked straight ahead. No one spoke a word as they rode down in the elevator.

There were no words to say.

EIGHT

There was utter silence after the door quietly closed behind the men.

“He didn’t do it,” Ellen said quietly but firmly.

“Absolutely not.” Nicole was just as firm.

Chloe looked at them. They meant every word. There was nothing ambiguous in their body language or voices.

Something eased in her heart, a slight lightening of the oppressive heaviness that had weighed her down as she listened to the police lieutenant interrogating Mike.

She knew nothing about him, really. And what did she know about men, anyway? Practically nothing. Did she think that just because he’d given her her first orgasm, he was a good guy? Sex and decency were not linked together. She was old enough to know that.

But still…something inside her resisted the notion that he was capable of hurting that woman the way the lieutenant had said. When he’d touched her in the hotel room, his huge, strong hands had been incredibly tender. She was in uncharted territory with only her admittedly weak knowledge of men and sex to go on, but she just couldn’t see Mike hurting a woman like that.

She didn’t know Mike at all, but Ellen and Nicole did.

“If there’s one thing Mike is incapable of, it’s hurting a woman,” Ellen said, rocking Gracie in her arms.

Nicole rubbed her belly. “Absolutely,” she said. “He’s one of the nicest guys in the world.”

Their words were directed at her. Chloe had no idea why. She had nothing to do with this. “I’m sure you’re right,” Chloe said gently. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think he beat that poor woman up, either.”

Latent violence had its clear markers. She had an instinctive feel for it. It was why she shied away from her ‘father’ all those years. Subconsciously, Chloe had made a study of it in men. When her PI Amanda uncovered what had happened to her at the age of five, she understood her unconscious obsession.

After Amanda lifted the rock and found her biological family, Chloe understood her entire life had been marked by the uncontrolled violence of her mother’s boyfriend. That was why she’d made an unofficial study of violent men.

She volunteered in a shelter in London and she’d seen quite a few members of that awful species. Violent men were of course violent for individual reasons but there was an awful sameness to their basic nature. Any calm they displayed was only skin deep. Violent men had violent emotions seething beneath an often charming verneer. They had fragile egos that could shatter at a misplaced word.

Mike had struck her as the opposite. He’d been a decorated Marine, a member of SWAT, men notable for their self control. The vibes that came from him were quiet calm and strength and no ego.

“I don’t think Mike is the type, so you don’t have to convince me,” she offered.

Nicole and Ellen looked at each other.

“Yes,” Nicole said. “We do.” She opened her hand in invitation. “Come on. Let’s go in the living room. I don’t think anyone has any appetite for food anymore.”

No. Chloe’s stomach was as tightly closed as a fist.

In the vast living room, without seeming to, Nicole and Ellen boxed Chloe in between them. Chloe liked them both but she didn’t like being manipulated.

Once they were seated, Nicole and Ellen shared another look in which it was silently decided Nicole would take the lead.

“Chloe, my dear. You really must believe us when we say Mike is absolutely innocent of the charges. He⁠—"

“Oh, I believe you,” Chloe said, looking from one tense face to the other. “Not that my opinion means anything.”

“Yes it does,” Ellen said softly. “It really does.”

“Mike likes you.” Nicole touched Chloe’s hand. “I know you got an image in there of a guy who sleeps around a lot and I can’t say that’s not true. Unfortunately it is. You know that old saying about looking for love in the wrong places? That’s Mike. But Mike has never once brought a woman around for us to meet. And both Sam and Harry say he’s never had a stable relationship. We have never seen him act the way he has around you. He couldn’t take his eyes off you. We think he’s very taken with you and maybe—" her hand tightened around Chloe’s. “Maybe you’re not indifferent?”

Chloe flashed on the hotel room, Mike’s mouth on hers, his heavy weight against her, thick penis rubbing against the lips of her sex…her body simply lit up at the memory.

Curse her fair skin. Chloe didn’t need to look in the mirror to know her face was stop-light red. She saw no reason to lie when her very skin was flashing the truth. “No,” she confessed quietly. “I’m not.”