ROMANCE: Mason (Bad Boy Alpha Male Stepbrother Romance Boxset) (New Adult Contemporary Stepbrother Romance Collection) (160 page)

When the first witch attacks had started I’d been there for him, and we’d fought them together. I’d fallen into the role of his bodyguard without either of us mentioning it. We’d trained together and before long I’d become stronger and more in control.

“If I could do it over now, I wouldn’t leave,” Gemma said, pulling me out of the memories, the stories I was telling her.

“Why did you leave?” I asked.

She shrugged against me. “I was young. I was stupid. He’d taken me away from my mom when I was twelve. I’d been angry about it, he’d taken me out of school where I had a lot of friends and boys that liked me. The stupidest things are important when you’re a kid.”

“He just wanted to look after you,” I said.

“I know… but he still could have done it differently. My life wasn’t in danger the way he kept telling me it was. I didn’t need him to do that, to rip my away from the family life and the school and they happy routine I had. He could have spoken to my mom. Instead he just took me and ran. The police didn’t even do anything about it. When I was old enough I ran.”

I frowned. “I don’t think you know the full story,” I said. “Your father didn’t just take you and run.”

“He didn’t want to face my mom,” she said. I shook my head.

“Your mother promised you to the coven so you could be the future high-priestess. Your dad had tried everything to stop her from it, but he told me her role in the coven was more important to her than your safety and freedom as a child. As a person.”

“My mom would never have done that,” she said but her voice was thin and it didn’t sound like she believed it.

“He did what he could,” I continued. “The way he spoke about you, you were his everything. He told me he couldn’t go to the police, not where witches were involved. They may not burn them at the stake anymore, but supernatural creatures aren’t exactly welcomed into society just yet. Trust me, I know.”

Gemma took a breath like she wanted to say something, but she didn’t.

“After you left they came after him, said that he’d ruined their chances, they couldn’t get to you now and he was meddling with something they had  right to. You were rightfully theirs because of your mother’s claim. I think that’s why they’re still after you.’

Gemma looked up at me and there were a million things in her eyes that she didn’t say.

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure they won’t get you,” I said.

Her eyes suddenly welled up with tears. “I thought he was a fool. If I’d known I would never be able to see him again, I would have done it differently. I would have… I don’t know…” she started crying again, unable to finish the rest of her sentence. I knew all too well what regret was, lost time that no one could ever get back. So I pulled her onto my chest and let her cry it out.

Heading back to Hollywood was going to be a rough one in itself. They tabloids wouldn’t let this one go, I knew it already. But the fact was that nothing could rip me away from her now. Not now that we were married. You couldn’t fire a man for that, no matter what. Unless it was what Gemma wanted, of course. But I doubted it was what she wanted. The warmth coming from her, the trust in me, the ability to cry in front of me, those were all signs that I had passed that invisible line that had stopped me from being this for her before.

I wasn’t her bodyguard now.

I would fix what I could, I protect the person that I was still alive. There was no use looking back, unless it was to learn or to remember with fondness. I would focus on the now, and keep her safe. Not just because she was my charge, Gemma LaGrange, the woman I’d vowed to protect, but because she was my wife.

Gemma

Trust was a horrible thing. I’d always been too naïve. I’d always trusted without thinking about it. Look where it had gotten me? As a child it had ripped me away from my mother. As a teenager it had gotten me involved with curses and spells and I’d almost sunken in over my head.

As an adult it had gotten me married to a werewolf. One that hadn’t told me what he was until recently. One that hadn’t told me how he’d come to find me. One that could keep secrets.

This had possibly been the biggest mistake of all if I hadn’t felt so strongly about him. I loved him. It was a fact and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t deny it.

It was just everything else now.

We decided to stay away from home longer. I didn’t feel ready to go back. I loved my life of fame and riches. I loved the Mansion and all the staff that worked for me. It was a thrill to have that kind of control, the power that only came with money. But it also came at a very great cost. Privacy was something I’d had to sacrifice almost permanently.

It hadn’t bothered me so much. Now that I was married to my former bodyguard it was different. The paparazzi would eat me alive before this thing settled down. I half-hoped Lindsay Lohan would do something crazy, or Justin Bieber, to take the attention away from me. But everyone behaved when I needed them to act out most.

We moved to a better hotel. Four stars, at least, so that we didn’t have to stay in a motel room that didn’t have a lock anymore. I was more accustomed to room service and goose down duvets. Heated toilet seats, fresh towels every morning. You got used to the life of luxury very quickly.

“I don’t see the point of us staying here,” Colt said when we lay side by side on the huge double bed. It was big enough to sleep five of us.

“We have the money and this is supposed to be our honeymoon. Why not?”

“I didn’t mean the hotel.” He turned his face and looked at me. His black eyes were  drowning deep. “I meant here, away from home. We have to go home and face the music some time.”

Face the music. It was an expression my father used to use. I wondered how many little things there had been before like this, ghosts of my father, that I hadn’t noticed.

“Not yet,” I said. “You know what life is like. There are times I just need to stay away for a bit.”

He nodded slowly, and turned his face away again, staring at the ceiling. I did the same. But it wasn’t about staying away. I loved my life and I was good at it. But I hadn’t decided exactly how I felt about Colt and his history with my father. About the fact that he didn’t let me know.

When he’d told me he loved me, and I’d said I loved him, too, it had been the truth. I did. Somewhere deep down inside of me there was a part that had loved him for as long as I’d known him. But when he’d asked me to spend the rest of my life with him it felt like it had been under an illusion. And illusion of safety.

Was I safe now? Yes I was. No doubt about it. But I didn’t know if marrying my body guard had kept me safe, or if it had locked me in a gilded cage. Why did it feel like that now that I knew? I just didn’t know.

Colt was the one that sat up.

“I have to go out for a bit,” he said.

He was leaving? Running?

“I just need to train,” he said like he knew what I was thinking. “I’ll be back.”

“What do I do until then?” I asked. I didn’t know how I meant it. Alone without him? Or alone with his protection.

“Just stay in the room. Watch some television. Snooze. I’ll be back soon.” He’d taken it as ‘without his protection’. I was grateful that I didn’t have to answer that for myself. I nodded and he leaned closer to me to kiss me. This kiss was lingering, something that hinted that it wanted to be more. He broke it and got up.

I was glad to see him leave. I hadn’t had a lot of time away from Colt before, and that had pleased me. I liked being around him. But now I wanted space to breathe. Space to think. When he left the room I waited fifteen minutes for him to get on his way, and then I got up and got dressed, too. The morning light fell into the window and the room was a soft buttery color. Under any other circumstances I would have stayed and relished it, but I wanted to get out.

The morning air was crisp when I stepped outside. I took a deep breath. It smelled different out here, so far away from everything. I headed down the street in no particular direction, my hands in my pockets and shoulders hunched against the slight chill. I had my hair tied up and a poor-boy hat on my head so no one would recognize me straight away.

I found a park and sat down on a bench. It was calm and peaceful.

“Lovely morning,” someone said and I looked up. She was tall and skinny, with wrinkled skin and hair so gray it was white. She smiled at me but there was something dark about her eyes, something that didn’t quite sit right. I felt the prickle of magic on my skin.

“No no, now don’t you get scared. I’m not here to harm you,” she said when I started backing away. Fear clutched at my throat. I should never have left the hotel room alone. Since I’d left my dad and gotten famous I hadn’t been without guards. I had been stupid.

“I’m off duty,” she said with a voice so sweet I didn’t believe it. “May I?” she gestured to the bench and I nodded slowly. I didn’t exactly want to refuse the witch a seat.

“You’re not usually without your guards,” she said casually, like we were friends.

“I needed a break,” I said. “I thought I was safe.”

“Of course, everyone needs some down time. And this is quite safe compared to some other places.”

A friendly warmth radiated from her, a feeling I hadn’t felt from witches I’d dealt with before. Her voice was pleasant albeit a little old and creaky. To anyone passing by it could have looked like I was sharing the bench with my grandmother.

“Oh, your mother loved things like this,” she said, looking out over the park. Something inside me lurched.

“You know my mother?”

“Oh yes. I was in her coven for a while, but I had to transfer. Family emergency, you understand.”

I nodded even though I didn’t really understand.

“Well, I haven’t seen her in a long time. She wasn’t exactly… mother material.”

The old witch looked at me like I was crazy, surprise clear on her face.

“What makes you say that?”

“Please don’t pretend like you don’t know. Every witch in the country knows about the LaGrange family saga. Where my mother promised me to the coven – some mother – and my father stole me away to save me.”

“I think you’ve got it all backwards,” she said. “You see, your mother had two choices. Either she could promise you to the coven as future high priestess, or she could sacrifice you.”

“Sacrifice me?” My blood went cold and I shivered despite the sunny warmth in the park.

“You know what has to be done to get in a position like that. High Priestess is now joke, human sacrifices need to be made from time to time and she had to give you up. She chose to promise you to them instead. A lesser of two evils, you could say. Your mother saved you. She was the best mother I’d ever known.”

“But my father—“

“Your father didn’t understand how witches worked, what she’d sacrificed for that. When he took you it was a terrible thing. Your mother almost didn’t make it. But the coven stood together and by some miracle she pulled through. She would give everything to see you again.”

“Really,” I said and my voice was dull. I kept my face calm, but there was so much going on inside of me.

“You just think about what I said, dear,” she said, patting my hand. It was a strange invasion in my personal space. I’d almost relaxed completely despite the fact that a witch had sat next to me. But when she touched me, I froze. She was still a witch. I could feel it in the darkness that hung around her, the eyes that would haunt me, the voice that would echo in my mind for a long time.

“You’re protecting yourself so feverishly, but from what? The life that your mother managed to give you when you were destined for death from the start?”

She disappeared and I felt like someone stuck a spoon into my soul and mixed it all up so that I didn’t’ know which way was up in my life anymore. My whole life I’d hated my mother. My father too, but differently. Now?

I made my way home, not because I was tired, but because I was suddenly scared. I’d been alone and I’d been nothing but lucky.

When I got to the room again Colt was frantic.

“Where the hell have you been?” he asked. Something inside me turned to stone and I pushed past him.

“Don’t talk to me like that,” I said in a cold voice.

“You can’t just disappear like that. What if something happened to you?”

“We may be married, Colt, but you don’t own me. And you can’t tell me what I can and can’t do. I’m still a person and my voices are my own. Just because we married doesn’t mean you have a say over me.”

“I just want to keep you safe,” he said.

“Really? Is that what you were doing with all those lies you were telling me?”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, like he was counting to ten in his head. We had never fought before and I’d never seen him angry. Not like this. Directed at me it was almost scary.

“I can’t lose you, Gemma,” he said and his voice was sincere. But I was confused and angry and his vulnerable emotions did nothing for me.

“Maybe I don’t want to be protected anymore,” I snapped. I knew it was a lie but I wasn’t going to admit it. “Maybe I want to be what my mother intended.”

The words knocked him hard and I could see the effect. It was like I’d hit him physically.