Forever Rockers (19 page)

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

Shane

One more hour, I kept reminding myself. One more hour and then I could take her away from all of this. One more hour and then we would be on the private plane Cecil had made ready for our use and I’d have Harper on the other side of the world. There would be no more prying eyes. No flashing cameras. No godsdamn stalker.

My wife would be safe and away from the shit storm that had come in like a fucking tornado and tossed our life upside down.

The past week had been a clusterfuck of the worst proportions. Harper hadn’t been aware of anything going on around her and I wanted to keep it that way for as long as possible. She had no idea of the latest sick shit that psychotic bitch had thrown at her. At
us
.

I was still trying to wrap my mind around it myself.

Was it true?

How destroyed would Harper be if it was?

Two days after Todd Jones had died, I’d gotten a surprise when I’d walked down our driveway to collect our mail from the box. I’d been thumbing through the junk mail, bills, and magazines when I’d found a thick envelope with no return address on it. It was addressed to Harper, and the handwriting was a pretty cursive but I didn’t recognize it. A sick feeling had tightened in my gut as I’d carefully opened the piece of mail.

The contents of that letter still haunted me. Not because of what it said about me, but because I didn’t know how it was going to affect Harper once she found out about it. There was no way to prove it was true or not, but that didn’t matter. That it was even a possibility would destroy her.

I didn’t want to tell her. Wished I could keep it from her for the rest of our lives, but if I didn’t, I knew she would find out about it from someone else and then… Then who knew what she would think or how she would react. Would she hate me?

Even as that thought was going through my mind, my father-in-law was being lowered into the ground so the person who stepped up between me and Linc caught me off guard. Turning my head, I met the gaze of Monica Jones Calloway—at least I thought it was her. She wasn’t dressed in her normal eye-catching designer outfit, but a simple black dress. The usual gallon of makeup was nowhere in sight. Her face was completely bare except for the pain in her eyes.

Seeing her like that, especially with the pain in her eyes, caught me off guard. I wanted to say something. Call her out and make her disappear before Harper had to come face to face with her bitch of a mother, but I didn’t want to draw unwanted attention to this woman. Usually that was exactly what she wanted, the attention whore. Right then, however, with that haunting look on her face, I didn’t think she was there for the attention.

I kept my mouth shut, but my eyes remained on Monica’s hand as she touched her daughter almost lovingly.

Moments later the minister was ending the last prayer and thanking everyone for coming. I pushed Monica’s hand away from Harper, unable to handle her touching my wife for a second longer. No matter what her eyes had said to me, I didn’t trust Monica and didn’t want Harper to have to deal with her mother’s BS on top of everything else.

The minister began to move away, talking to one or two people. Dallas turned in her chair, having been so tuned in to Harper that she hadn’t yet noticed the enemy was among us. Sky-blue eyes turned glacier when she spotted Monica standing between me and Linc, then she quickly started looking around, in search of something—or someone.

That’s when it hit me.
Ariana
. Where was Harper’s stepsister? The not-so-beautiful Ariana was nowhere in sight and that was just all kinds of wrong. Monica and Ariana rarely went anywhere without each other. It was like the two evil bitches were attached at the fucking hip. If Monica was there without Ariana, then maybe she was actually there to offer her daughter comfort.

Maybe.

I wasn’t going to hold my breath.

Dallas turned her gaze back to me. “Get her out of here,” she mouthed and I nodded.

Bending, I scooped Harper into my arms. I didn’t even know if she remembered me carrying her from the church to the limo and then to the graveside earlier. She’d been out of it. I hadn’t known if it was a good thing or a bad one. She’d clocked out and gone inside herself, and I’d almost been thankful for it, but at the same time it had scared the fuck out of me.

Her arms wrapped around my neck automatically, her head resting on my shoulder as she buried her face in my neck when I turned to carry her back to the limo. Monica moved to stand in front of me, her eyes almost beseeching as she lifted a hand to touch Harper. I took a step back, glaring at her and shaking my head. Behind her, Cecil grasped her arm firmly and turned her to face him. He said something I didn’t hear and Monica’s shoulders dropped.

I didn’t have time to wonder what he had said to her and I didn’t give a damn anyway. I tucked my wife closer and headed toward the waiting limo where Theo was already holding the door open for me. Peterson was close behind me and helped me in with her still in my arms. She hadn’t spoken, hadn’t so much as whimpered and I was starting to worry about her. Had she gone catatonic on me?

The door closed behind us, shutting us in and offering the first moment of personal time since we’d left the house that morning. “Beautiful,” I whispered and rearranged her so I could see her face better. Tears were pouring down her face and each one was like a sharp slice to my gut. Damn it. All I wanted was to make her pain go away, but I knew I couldn’t offer her that. It seemed like I only added to it lately.

I would only keep adding to it.

Having to witness her in so much pain brought tears to my own eyes, but I didn’t try to hide them as I lowered my head and brushed my lips over hers. I sat there, just kissing her softly for several long minutes. Her cold fingers moved from around my neck and into my hair and I nearly breathed a sigh of relief. More tears spilled from my eyes as I deepened the kiss and she let me inside her delicious mouth.

I let the kiss go on for a little longer before pulling back and pressing my forehead to hers. I knew better than to ask if she was okay. She wasn’t and I knew she would lie and tell me she was just to try and make me feel better. I didn’t want to feel better. “Ready for three weeks of peace?” I asked instead.

She nodded and wiped the back of her hand over her cheeks. “Yes,” she whispered.

“Good. I told Rex to suck it. If he gives you any trouble, fire his ass.” A small snort left her and I thought I saw the ghost of a smile teasing at her lips.

It had taken a few hours, but after Cecil had arrived and started going through all the legal shit that Harper hadn’t been able to deal with, he’d discovered one little thing that told me Todd Jones had been thinking of his daughter’s happiness long before he’d gotten sick.

A year before Harper had started working for
Rock America
, the magazine had been losing ground and had needed a big infusion of funds. Cecil had stepped in as a silent partner and helped Rex out. Whether Todd had helped Harper get her job in the first place was still questionable, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. She now owned the controlling shares of the magazine. What she wanted to do with that new power at work, I didn’t have a clue, but I knew she could—and would—do great things with it.

The door to the limo opened without warning and Cecil stuck his head in. “You guys go on. I’m going to ride back to your house with Emmie and Nik.” His gaze went to his stepdaughter and his eyes softened. “I love you, Harpie. Enjoy your time alone, sweetheart. I’ve got everything covered here.”

Weakly, Harper lifted her hand and reached for Cecil’s. “I love you too, Cece. Th-thank you so much for being here for me.” Fresh tears spilled free and she sniffed a few times before giving him a watery smile. “Don’t work too hard, though. Okay?”

“I promise.” He gave her hand a loving squeeze before letting go and stepping back. His eyes went to me. “Keep her safe,” he practically growled.

“I will,” I vowed before he shut the door.

No sooner had the door closed was it opened again. Emmie stuck her head in. “I love you both.”

“Love you, Em.”

“Thanks for everything, Emmie,” Harper told her with a small smile. “I honestly don’t know what I would do without you.”

“That’s what family is for, babe.” She blew us a kiss and stepped back to let Peterson get in. Her eyes were hard when she looked down at the bodyguard. “Take care of them for me,” she commanded before shutting the door.

“Where are we going, anyway?” Harper asked sleepily as she put her head back down on my shoulder.

“I thought I’d surprise you,” I murmured, pressing my lips to her forehead. “But you can bet it will be somewhere far away from any paps, or people. Or even the fucking internet.”

“Mm,” she sighed. “Sounds like paradise.”

I couldn’t have agreed more.

It was a long flight. We had to stop to refuel in Paris, but Harper had been sound asleep through that brief stop. She’d woken up around the time we’d flown over the French Alps, and she’d been glancing out the window with the first signs of excitement in her eyes that I’d seen in over a week as she tried to figure out where we were going.

“Will we be able to go skiing?” she’d murmured as she looked down at the snow-covered mountains.

“Where we’re going, there are no slopes, beautiful,” I’d given in and told her.

Her eyes had brightened and she covered her mouth with her hands when she realized exactly where we were going. “You didn’t,” she whispered. I gave a shrug and winked at her as I took a long swallow from my bottle of water. “Shane!” she squealed and seconds later she was out of her seat and straddling my lap, not caring that Theo and Peterson were sitting just a few feet away or that the flight attendant was just behind the curtain.

My body tightened as soon as her hot little body was on top of my own. She pressed sweet little kisses all over my face. “I love you so much, Shane. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” She thrust her fingers into my hair and pulled my head back. “Thank you,” she whispered and sealed her lips to mine.

I didn’t care about our small audience as I gripped her luscious ass and squeezed. We hadn’t made love in a week and I was about to go insane with the need to be inside of her tight body. I still had a few hours left before I could do that, but I would savor every second of the torture she was putting me through right then.

Breathless, she pulled back. “You bought it, didn’t you? The cabin where we spent our first anniversary?”

I grinned up at her, remembering the fun we’d had the week we’d spent at the cabin in the Swiss Alps. My body tightened even more at the memories, but I held on to my willpower—mostly. “It holds some really good memories, beautiful.”

Violet eyes darkened. “Yes, it definitely does.” She brushed a softer kiss over my lips and pulled back enough that she wasn’t making me have to grit my teeth in agony. Thank fuck, because I was about to go off in my damn suit pants. “Is Ranger with Emmie?”

“He’s not at Emmie’s.” Her eyes widened and she opened her mouth but I cut off her protest. “Linc is going to stay at our place and watch him, beautiful. Ranger gets to stay where he’s comfortable and we have some muscle watching the house. Linc is going to be staying with us for a few months. At least until Christmas.”

“Really? You promise?”

“Promise.”

I’d asked Linc to stay and it hadn’t taken more than two seconds for him to agree. After the last shit-trick the stalker had pulled, I wanted all of the people Harper loved and trusted to be a constant in her day-to-day life. I was scared shitless that she was going to pull back from me when I finally showed her the latest stab that evil cunt had taken at our relationship.

Honestly, I only had myself to blame for all this crap. I never should have done all the shit I’d done in the past. Now it was back with a vengeance to haunt me. I just hoped it wouldn’t cost me the most important person in my life.

Emmie

What the fuck?

I must have asked myself that at least a few thousand times in the last week. This shit was getting ridiculous and I was getting sick and tired of it all. I hadn’t slept, had barely eaten, and I felt like pure crap. If I didn’t know better I would have sworn I was pregnant from just how bad I was feeling, but that was nonsense. I’d taken safety measures to make sure that Jagger was our last bundle of joy by having my tubes tied after delivering him via C-section.

My being sick wasn’t from pregnancy this time, though. It was stress, plain and simple. I was queen of dealing with stressful situations and fixing them without a problem—at least not too many, anyway. I couldn’t fix this, though. Fuck, it felt like I couldn’t fix anything anymore, not without five more things popping up that needed fixing.