Betrayal of the Dove (Men of Action) (21 page)

Here, he could talk to her, and she would understand a little, but she would never truly know the situations he had been in, or how he was dealing with the aftermath of them. She had military brothers so she knew something about it, but even her brothers were closed when it came to discussing the heartache they had seen during their career. She knew they had suffered. Gavin avoided an entire city when he vowed not to set foot in D.C. again, which was more to do with the Sabian issue than anything; and Thomas had gone on the hunt for over a decade, putting his personal life in the freezer, basically, so that he could get justice for his dead friends. Thena had thawed him a little, but even with her he had held on without wanting to promise her forever until his vendetta was over. And now, she was with another military man who seemed to fail the test of communication. The walls went up the second she asked about his family. She felt it, felt the tension, and knew the moment he shut down. If they were going to be more than bed buddies with each other then he needed to talk with her. She fell so hard for him in such a short time that it scared her. But what scared her more was knowing that he might not ever really be able to connect with her.

“Okay,” she sighed when she realized he had no plans of opening his mouth to speak. “I’ll tell you a little about me…about why I’m afraid to love again.” He just laid there looking up at the ceiling, probably counting the tiles above them so he could disconnect even more.

“My dad cheated on my mom. Nobody ever saw that one coming. He just…he left her, left us as a family. My mom was completely oblivious. Here she was, by his side during his stay in the hospital and he was busy falling in love with a volunteer assistant…think candy striper who looked like a Playboy cosmetically enhanced playmate and you have what he left my mother for.” She was still angry about it. Her dad had some blockage in one of his leg arteries and he had gone in for surgery. They were going to let him go home, but some complications arose and he ended up staying in the hospital for nearly three weeks. And in three weeks he had successfully destroyed over thirty years of marriage to the woman he claimed to love; to the woman who had been the mother of his children.

“I was so angry,” she told him. “I still am.” Her eyes drifted over to the far corner of the room, absently watching the floor as if there were some mysterious object there to entrance her. “Anyway, for a long time I just didn’t want to expose myself to that kind of heartache. I mean, I saw how my mom took it. She tried to be strong for us. She didn’t want us to think badly about our father. But I heard the tears she cried behind closed doors. I saw the pain in her eyes after every meeting with her attorney. I saw the longing for what used to be and I didn’t want that. But, she got over it, and she moved on. She found a good man, remarried, she’s happy, and in love. I guess I had gotten over my fear too—for a little while anyway.” She could hear the distant, detached tone her voice was suddenly taking. It was the only way she could tell anybody about what happened. “I met a great guy—at least I thought he was. He had walked into my store, so confident and sexy. He wasn’t tall, not even as tall as you,” she laughed, “but I’m short so his height never bothered me. He was cute too. And I fell for him hard. We were talking marriage. And when I went to surprise him in Utah I found out he was already married.” She laughed absently at her own stupidity. “Yeah, here I was, hating the “other woman” who had busted up my mom and dad’s marriage, and I was suddenly her—unknowingly and unwillingly, but just because I didn’t know didn’t change the fact that I was the other woman. And for a while I hated myself for that. And I guess I hated him, not just for lying to me, for using me, for betraying me and his wife, but I hated him for making me hate myself.”

“That wasn’t your fault, Alyssa.”

“I know that now. I guess I knew it then too, but that didn’t change the anger I felt. And I guess since he wasn’t here for me to take my anger out on him, I took it out on myself. I swore off men because they were all lying to me—at least that’s how I justified it. And I just locked myself away from romantic entanglements…it was easier. I guess that’s why I can understand what Eve is going through; because I’ve been there. Different circumstances, same response.” She finally looked at him, to find him watching her closely. She gave him a one shoulder shrug. “Life happens,” she said before reclining onto her back and staring up at the ceiling tiles as well.

“My dad hated everything I did,” he finally said. “Nothing was ever good enough. My mom never really stuck up for me. He was the “head of household,” or some crap like that. When the military recruits came to my high school I didn’t need to think twice, I just did it. I had just turned eighteen and I didn’t need permission to do it so I put in my papers and agreed to go into the service right after graduation. I didn’t even tell them I was going to do it, or that I was thinking of doing it until I had actually done it. I should have done things differently, but at the time it seemed like the only way.” He turned his head to look at her after she had turned on her side so that she could face him.

“I came home in my uniform and I thought maybe my father would be proud that I had done something with my life. But instead of seeing what I had done, he could only see what I hadn’t done. Shane,” he said in a voice that seemed to mimic his father’s disapproving tone. “You’re not the son I thought you would be.” Shane placed his hand on her arm as if seeking some stable ground for his emotions. “Well, Dad,” he sighed. “You’re not the father I thought you would be either,” he frowned. “I wanted to tell him that, but I didn’t. I should have.”

“Would that have made you feel better; to tell him what you thought? “

“I don’t know, maybe.”

“I don’t think you would have felt any better. I think you wanted to hurt him, the way he had hurt you, but fortunately you were the bigger man and you controlled yourself. If you had sunk to his level you wouldn’t have respected yourself for that.”

He nodded. “True, oh wise one.”

She laughed. She did always have a knack for being the emotional problem solver for everybody, sometimes everybody except herself. Although she would admit that she managed to pull herself through some difficult times. “So,” she sighed. “When do you leave?”

“How did you know I was leaving?”

Her lips turned upward in a half hearted grin. “You were downstairs with Leo for a while and when you came back up here you made love to me like a man getting ready to go on a mission he wasn’t sure he was going to return from.

“I have to meet with my former commanding officer to get some details, some files,” he clarified. “I’ll only be in Colorado for a couple days. Then I’ll be back. Leo will be here and he has agreed to watch over you.”

She shrugged. “I’m fine, Shane. I have my work,” she held up her hand to stop him from protesting because she was opening her store in the morning. “And I’ll stay here at night. I’ll be fine. You just focus on you and making sure you come back alive. Because,” she eased up to rest on her arm and look at him so seriously that she was sure he would understand her words. “If you get yourself killed I’m going to shoot myself and come on after you; you won’t have a peaceful afterlife if I do.”

He chuckled and shook his head. “I didn’t realize you believed in life after death.”

“I don’t, but one never knows until one dies. If there is a great hereafter, then you’d better hope you’re one hundred twenty before you go there or I’m going to haunt you for an eternity.”

“How do you know I wouldn’t be in purgatory…or hell? You wouldn’t land there; trust me, baby.”

“Oh,” she nodded. “I will find you.” And she meant every word of that. “You keep your head up and don’t get distracted. Whoever this guy is, I don’t want you to be the third person on his kill belt. Please be safe?”

“I will,” he promised her. “I’ll come back to you—alive.”

“You better. I’m not sure my heart can take it if you don’t.”

“You love me; huh?” He grinned like the Cheshire cat.

“I do,” she admitted softly as she gazed into his eyes. “I don’t know how it happened; I don’t know when exactly, but somewhere between you walking into my store and right now, I fell harder than I’ve ever fallen in my life. I’m afraid to share my world with you; but I’m afraid not to share my world with you too.”

“I won’t hurt you,” he promised her. “Because somewhere between reading everything I could find out about you, and now, I’ve fallen in love with you too.”

She laughed. “Just how much information about me is floating around out there?”

“To be fair, I looked you up on-line after I met you. You were under the radar until you opened the store. Your opening was in the on-line newspapers and print. Your picture on-line sparked a few discussions.”

“Oh no,” she covered her eyes. “People on-line can be mean. I don’t think I want to know.”

“Trust me, there was nothing mean about the comments…scary maybe, but not mean.”

“Scary?”

“There are always a few yahoos who don’t know how to treat a woman and somehow think lewd remarks will land them in bed with said woman.”

“Oh,” she nodded. “So my store opening propelled me into the spotlight…” she started laughing hard. It wasn’t as if she could call the limited publicity her store received for opening on the Row instant fame. Every new shop that came to the elite, and oh so expensive, area managed to get free press because it was treated as big news for the area. She considered it free advertisement that let people know she was open for business. They had strict rules about signage for the shops. They couldn’t have banners that let people know it was a grand opening. There were no electronically lit signs allowed; since she lived above her store she was actually thankful for that. They also couldn’t have balloons to advertise sales, and the signs that were allowed in the windows had to be, “fitting to the Row, and pleasing to the eyes.” Loosely translated, the signs had to be about the size of a five by seven postcard with one color for the background and one color for the written text. Oh, and the font had to be either elegant like an Edwardian Script or simply basic like a Garamond Italic. She found that out the hard way when she put her first sign in the window that had a picture of one of her pieces. The city official stopped in and reminded her of the rules. She hadn’t known about that one, which he was sure she hadn’t because it had recently been adapted into the bylaws and they hadn’t gotten around to adding it into the buying contract yet—recently added was code for added three years ago and they were too lazy or too cheap to update their forms. He had been nice about informing her, so she couldn’t hate him for it, but had she known it was going to be that crazy she might have considered opening slightly off the Row. On the other end of things, she wasn’t sure if her store’s success would have been any greater just because she had personalized signs whenever there was a sale. There really wasn’t any real way of gauging the difference thanks to the stringent rules.

“Be careful while I’m gone, Alyssa. Leo’s great, just please let him keep you safe.”

“Shane, your friend deserves the vacation he came here for. Let him go and enjoy what Arizona has to offer. I’ll be fine.”

“He and I both agreed it would be best if you had protection.”

“Oh you did; did you? Do I have a say in this?”

“No.”

His one word reply made it clear he believed the conversation was over. He obviously thought she would accept his friend’s protection while he was away and there was no arguing about it. She shook her head at him. “You are worse than my brothers.” She didn’t think it would be possible to find anybody who was more suffocating and obnoxious when it came to her than Gavin and maybe even Thomas. The difference was, unlike Eve, she had pretty much learned how to handle them at a young age. She figured they knew the more they insisted she didn’t do something they didn’t want her to do, the more likely she was to do it. If they had been able to have things their way she probably would still be in Boston, close enough for at least one of her brothers to constantly check up on her.