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She closed her eyes, but he felt her tears continue to fall, and all he could do was hold her tightly, until finally, she fell asleep.
* * *
They traveled to Ellis’s mom’s home in Massachusetts for the funeral. Chad returned to Connecticut, but Zach and two of his people stayed on. They’d be staying with PJ until they put new security in place—security vetted by both Zach and Chad.
Gabe watched as PJ spoke quietly to Ellis’s mom after the funeral when they’d all returned to the house. Ellis’s mother smiled weakly and nodded, and Gabe knew PJ was doing her best to comfort her.
He had also seen a more human side to Lydia during the funeral trip. Oh, she had been a whirlwind, organizing the funeral service, the catering for the after-funeral get-together, ensuring notices got in the paper…. That type of thing.
But, Lydia had also been there to console her mom. He watched now as Lydia and PJ walked arm in arm up the stairs. Lydia said she would gather some photos of Ellis for PJ to take with her, so he assumed that’s where they were headed.
Their heads were bowed together as they murmured to one another.
This had to be hard on Lydia, even if she had sometimes treated Ellis more like an employee than a brother. But, Gabe had never worked with family, so maybe that was necessary to keep things running smoothly at work.
Gabe left Zach by the buffet table and wandered into the den off the living room. There were a few people here and there in the room, talking in small groups, but it was much less crowded than the living room. He took in the walls lined with family photos.
There were dozens of them. They seemed to go in mostly chronological order, beginning on the left side of the room when Lydia was just an infant. Gabe looked at the photos and continued to the point where Lydia must have been about fourteen years old. It struck Gabe as odd how often Lydia was being held by her father in the photos. Even in all of the early pictures where she was a tiny infant, she was in her father’s arms, not her mother’s. Perhaps her mom was the photographer in the family….
When Lydia was about fourteen years old, someone else entered the pictures. There was Ellis grinning at the camera, always next to his mother. In fact, in many of them, Ellis stood between his mother and Lydia instead of one child on either side of their mother.
The family dynamic was incredibly bizarre, and the preferences were more than a little evident to anyone looking at them. Over time, Lydia stood a little further away from Ellis and her mother, rarely smiling. It was subtle, but unmistakable.
Gabe wondered how Lydia’s mom could make such a showcase of the photos. He would have thought she’d hide the photos away. Or at the very least, that she would have noticed what the pictures showed over the years—that she preferred her son—and made changes. But, apparently she hadn’t.
The information was there in color for him, the whole story laid out. For a couple of pictures after Ellis arrived, there were Lydia and her father and Ellis and his mother. They all stood together in the photos, but they were separate at the same time. Each parent clearly doting on their ‘chosen’ child.
And then Lydia’s father was gone. A car accident, Gabe remembered. From then on, it was only Lydia by herself, standing next to her mother and Ellis, so clearly separated from them by some invisible wall. Lydia also appeared extremely angry, and all of that anger was directed at one person.Ellis.
In almost every shot, Lydia was ignored. She stood off to the side in many, her gaze intent on one thing: her brother with her mom. Good God, even at Lydia’s own high school graduation, Ellis and his mom stood slightly apart from Lydia in the picture. She looked at the camera, but her expression was off. As though she knew she stood alone.
Ellis, on the other hand, looked adoringly at his sister. If her mom hadn’t noticed her lack of love for her brother, apparently neither had he.
Gabe shook himself. Maybe he was being silly—reading much more into these pictures than was really there. But, the hair on the back of his neck stood on end, and he suddenly wanted to get to Pru.
He strode from the room and crossed through the living room in a few strides, grabbing Zach as he went. They took the stairs at a run, and that’s when he heard it. The sound of glass breaking upstairs.
Gabe picked up speed.
He wasn't prepared for what he saw when he burst into the room. PJ and Lydia knelt on the floor over a broken picture frame. But what really hit him, was PJ's arms around Lydia as sobs wracked the other woman's body.
He and Zach backed out of the room and went downstairs to wait for the women to join them. They came down an hour later as the last of the guests left. PJ and her team said their good-byes, and PJ gave Lydia a final hug on the front steps.
In the morning, PJ and her team would go on to the next stop on the tour, resuming the schedule that had been interrupted two days before. Debra would take over for Lydia for the next few stops until she was ready to rejoin them on the tour.
Chapter 19
Gabe was silent as he removed his clothing, before swiftly stripping PJ of hers. Even though he’d been wrong about Lydia, he hadn’t fully recovered from the icy fear that raced through his veins when he’d thought Lydia might be the real person trying to hurt PJ.
His hands had shaken, and his heart pounded when he thought she was in danger.
He’d never needed to hold her and love her more than he needed that now. He wanted to sink into her and just hold on, make love to her for hours.
He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her into his lap, impaling her in one swift stroke as she sank onto him. She groaned and wrapped her arms around his neck, letting her head fall to his shoulder.
He began to move slowly within her, pumping his hips slightly as he leaned down to capture a nipple in his mouth, drawing another moan from her.
Gabe caught her arms in his and held them behind her back, pushing her breasts closer to him, exposing her, so he could worship every inch of her body. She kept her arms still as he let his free hand glide down her body, hips pumping all the while, reveling in the feel of her muscles surrounding him, drawing out every inch of pleasure.
