Page 80 of Perfect Vengeance

“Seriously?” Deke snorted. “I hope you nailed the driver’s ass.”

“Deacon! Language.”

Deke grinned sheepishly. “Sorry, Ma.”

The corners of Jack’s mouth lifted. “Yeah, I nailed them.”

Kinsey had been driving, but Gina understood what Jack wasn’t saying and why he was holding back a full-fledged grin. He had nailed them. More specifically, he’d nailed her.

Gina nearly choked on the gulp of wine she took next.

“I hope it’s nothing serious.” Jack’s mother eyed his cast warily.

“Anyone know where Lance is?” He looked from Deke to Kyle.

“Nope,” Kyle said, and Deke shook his head. “Wherever he is, he’s gone dark.”

“I worry about all of you boys.” A wistful expression overcame Elaina’s face. “Not knowing where Lancelot is makes me worry most about him.”

Gina raised her brows. Lancelot?

As if answering her unspoken question, Jack said, “Ma was going through a Knights of the Round Table phase when little brother was born. The rest of the free world calls him Lance.”

“Ah. I see.” She grinned. Wherever the missing brother was, she was reasonably certain he was as strikingly handsome as the rest of the Gates boys. Boys. Gina stifled a giggle. No one could ever mistake these enormous men for boys.

“Where did you two meet?” Elaina looked from Gina to Jack.

She swallowed her wine, trying not to make an audible gulping sound. Where all couples met these days. In a mobster’s closet. With your son’s hand on my breast.

“At the fundraiser for that women’s shelter,” Jack supplied, then took a sip of his wine.

Kyle’s dark brows drew together. “The one I gave you a check for?”

Something seemed to pass between the two brothers, but she couldn’t determine what.

“Gina volunteers there,” Jack said, which was true. Kind of. “She helps raise money for them.”

Raise? Again, kind of.

Kyle pinned her with those golden eyes, the intensity of which made her heart thump faster.

“It must be expensive to run a shelter,” Elaina said.

“It is.” She set down her glass. “Most women—and the occasional man—who go to a shelter have nothing. Many have to leave their spouse or significant other with little or no cash and often with only the shirts on their backs. It costs a lot to establish a new life, and that’s where we come in.”

From across the table, Jack smiled at her. Was that pride in his eyes?

“What happens when the spouse or significant other goes to the shelter looking for them?” Elaina asked.

Gina was about to respond when Kyle interrupted. “Shelter locations are kept secret. No one is ever told where these people go when they get set up with a new life.” He picked up his wineglass, staring at it without drinking.

“That’s right.” Gina nodded, sensing a dark undercurrent from Jack’s brother. “The shelter may relay a message, but there’s never any direct contact.”

“Ever,” Kyle added.

The woman in Chicago? Jack had said his brother saved her from a vicious beating, then she went into the system and disappeared. Judging from the faraway look in Kyle’s eyes, she really had been important to him. Perhaps, she still was.

Thirty minutes later, Jack and Deke helped their mother clear the dishes and went into the kitchen, leaving Gina with Kyle to set out dessert plates and coffee cups.