Heart of the Hunter (70 page)

It wasn’t very mature of me. It wasn’t honest. I’m not proud.

But I was desperate. I’d been dating Rob for two weeks, and I could tell things weren’t going to change. The way things were with Rob was the way they would always be. It wasn’t hell. I mean, he hadn’t tried to pressure me into another threesome with Duke or anything. He’d at least meant it when he said he’d realized how stupid he was being treating me like that.

But on all the little things, I knew he’d never change. He just couldn’t. He still thought I needed to make an effort to be more beautiful for him. He still encouraged me to try the various, drastic treatments that were available at his clinic. He didn’t say it, but deep down, it made me feel like he didn’t think I was beautiful enough. He said he wanted a woman like me, someone intelligent who was willing to stand up to him and challenge him, but I think what he really wanted was a twenty-year-old supermodel with tits the size of watermelons.

“Thanks for coming, everyone,” I said.

“Of course, Lacey,” Faith said. “We’re a family. If you say this guy is important to you, we’re all here to welcome him, aren’t we, Grant?”

Grant took a deep breath. I watched him carefully. Faith knew what I was doing, of course. She knew I was still hung up on Grant. She knew I needed to force him to make a decision, take a stand, and she was hoping as much as I was that Grant would do something tonight.

What was holding him back? Did he really just not want me? That was my biggest fear in the world.

The doorbell rang. I got up but Grant beat me to it.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“Getting the door.”

“Sit down,” I said, making it clear I wasn’t kidding.

Grant shrugged, as if he didn’t know what the big deal was, but he knew.

I met Rob at the door and for the briefest of seconds, I was sure I saw a flash of disappointment in his eyes. It was because I was dressed in my normal clothes. I knew he preferred me dolled up like a bimbo, he’d made that amply clear, and I’d even tried to dress the way he liked, but I just couldn’t do it tonight. I couldn’t dress that way in front of Faith and the brothers. They’d never let me live it down.

The truth was, I was ashamed to dress that way. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with looking like that if that’s the way you want to look, but they’d have known I was only doing it to please Rob, and that was humiliating in some way.

“You look very … businesslike,” Rob managed to say, as he kissed me on the cheek.

I chose to take it as a compliment even though it was seriously lacking. “Thank you, Rob. You look rather dashing yourself.”

The annoying thing was that he did look dashing. He always looked great in a suit.

I led him into the dining room, where he was greeted warmly by Faith, Jackson, Forrester and Grady.

Only Grant remained seated. And that’s when the sparks started to fly. Rob wasn’t one bit happy to see Grant.

His jaw dropped almost to the floor when he saw Grant.

“You!” he said, like he had just found some fugitive from the FBI’s most wanted list. “It’s you. You’re the one.”

There was a knot of guilt in my stomach but I forced myself to swallow it. It was completely out of character for me to invite a guy I was seeing to meet everyone. The only reason I’d done it was to provoke a response from Grant, and now I waited to see what he’d do.

But I hadn’t ever connected the dots. Not completely. Grant was the one who’d punched out Rob at Club Viper. I hadn’t known it, and we’d never spoken of it, but Grant had responded to my plea for help after all. He’d come to Club Viper. He cared about me. The realization took my breath away.

“The one who beat you up?” Grant said, a bottle of wine in his hand. “Of course. Who’d you think you were going to find here?”

“What the hell?” Rob said, more to me than to Grant. “This is the guy who punched out me and my friends at the club.”

“Grant,” I said, my eyes full of tears. I was overcome with emotion. “Is that true?”

Grant just laughed. “Come on, Lacey. You knew it was me who knocked this guy’s dick in the dirt.”

“No I didn’t,” I gasped. The truth was, I hadn’t dared allow myself to believe it had been him.

“Yes you did. You sent me there.”

“Sent you there?”

“The text message, asking for help. You knew what would happen.”

“Grant,” I said again, even more emotion in my voice. “I never asked you to beat up anyone. I’d never ask you to fight for me. I know you wouldn’t want to.”

A look of anger flash across his eyes. I shuddered with guilt as I watched the scene unfold. It was completely unfair, completely manipulative. It was exactly the kind of thing I hated. Some woman bringing together two guys, just so that they’d have to fight it out over her. It was like something out of a high school drama.

But Grant had come when I’d texted. That changed everything.

Rob was fuming. “Lacey. What’s the meaning of this? I have to leave.”

“Don’t,” I said, but out of the corner of my eye I was watching what Grant would do. It was only Grant’s response that I was really interested in.

“Look,” Rob said. “I knew this guy was looking for you at the club, Lacey. But I didn’t know he was your family. I didn’t know you’d called him to come. I thought he was just some jealous ex-boyfriend.”

Grant laughed. “Look, Rob. I kicked your butt because you were being an asshole. Not because I was jealous.”

Rob shook his head. He looked at me desperately. “What’s the meaning of this?” he demanded. “Why did you invite me here? So that this brute could beat me up again?”

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I never knew he was the one who’d beat you up. I really didn’t.”

I felt bad now for doing this. It wasn’t fair to Rob. He’d done nothing wrong. He was just trying to date me, trying to give me the relationship that I craved. I looked at him in his handsome suit. He’d brought chocolates and flowers, which I hadn’t even taken from him yet.

What kind of a person was I becoming? You didn’t try to square people up against each other. It wasn’t right.

And besides, Grant wasn’t taking the bait. He didn’t want me, not even now that he could see who his competition was. I guess Grant and Rob weren’t competition at all. You can only be in competition with someone if you both want the same thing, and Grant didn’t want me.

“I’m sorry,” I said to the room. “This was a mistake. I thought we could all have a nice dinner together.”

“Why can’t we?” Grant said, only heightening my humiliation.

“You know why we can’t.”

“Because of your games?”

“I’m not playing games,” I said.

Grant just shook his head. “Sure you aren’t,” he said. Then he got up from the table and walked out of the room. A moment later we heard his motorcycle fire up as he tore down the driveway, headed anywhere but where I was.

He’d punched out Rob because he thought I was in danger. But now that he thought I actually liked Rob, he didn’t care. He didn’t care at all. He’d been protective of me, but only in the way he’d always been, as a loyal family member, as a brother.

He wasn’t jealous in the romantic sense. He hadn’t taken the bait. Not for a second.

I was extremely quiet during the rest of the meal, which despite what had happened with Grant, actually went surprisingly well. Everyone else was really nice to Rob. I guess they believed me when I said I was serious about him. They were being supportive. I should have been grateful. But all I really wanted to do was cry.

Without Grant there, the whole thing was pointless. The room felt empty without him.

Chapter 24

Grant

H
AVE YOU EVER FUCKED UP
your life so bad that you’re not even sure you’ll be able to go on living? I don’t mean like losing a big bet on a table at Vegas, or getting fired from your job. I mean something really important, like convincing the one person you love more than anything else in the world, that you don’t even care about her?

Because that’s what I did.

Don’t even ask me how. I don’t know how it happened, or why I let it. Maybe it was pride. Maybe it was fear. But somehow, I just let Lacey believe I wasn’t interested, and I let that creep Rob win her away from me.

Little by little, day by day, she drifted further out of my reach, and further into the arms of Rob. I didn’t even just watch her drift away, I pushed her away. I stopped talking to her. I avoided her at the mansion. I didn’t fight with her, I didn’t show her any emotion, and I didn’t give her anything to hold onto. I just pretended, day after day, that I didn’t give a rat’s ass what she did with Rob.

What was I afraid of?

Why was I intent on pretending I wasn’t interested in her?

Why was I hiding from the truth?

That’s not an easy question for me to answer. I guess the truth lies in a lot of places. For one thing, I’d grown up so close to Lacey that it was difficult to admit to myself that I was romantically in love with her. For another thing, I was proud, and I’d told her I wasn’t interested in a serious relationship with any woman. I didn’t want to go back on my word. Finally, I was afraid of screwing it up. What if we started a relationship, and then she realized I wasn’t the guy for her? What if she decided I wasn’t good enough? How would I ever be able to live with that?

I know it sounds stupid, or petty, but this was my life, and it was one-hundred-percent critical to me. Put yourself in my shoes. Has there ever been anyone in your life that you were so in love with, that it literally terrified you? I was so terrified of losing her love that I had to pretend it wasn’t even a possibility.

Doesn’t make sense, does it? Well that’s life. There’s a lot of things men do that don’t make sense. Just look at football. The whole game doesn’t make sense, and yet we watch game after game of the strongest athletes in the country crashing into each other at full speed.

We like disaster and chaos just as much as we like order and peace. Don’t ever forget that. There’s something very comforting for men in chaos. In chaos, everything goes to shit. And if everything goes to shit, then there’s no one to blame. It wasn’t your fault. That’s the mode I was in with Lacey. If I drove her away, if I forced myself not to give her any warmth, then disaster would follow. She’d be with Rob. That was the worst thing that could happen. And if the worst thing happens, nothing worse can happen. And there’s a comfort in that. It may be a hollow, worthless comfort, but it’s a comfort all the same, and I know women won’t understand it. But it’s the truth.

It eats at you. It sure ate at me. I knew it wasn’t right. I couldn’t get her out of my mind. I’d lie down at night on my bed, and the last thing on my mind was Lacey. I’d wake up in the morning, and she was my first thought. I’d watch her around the mansion. It was like the old days when she was in high school. I’ll even admit that I went back up to the loft in the barn and I took down the envelope of her pictures, and I jerked off, fantasizing about the sex we’d had up there.

What I wouldn’t do to have that back.

But the more I wanted her, the more I obsessed, the further I drove her away. Just two weeks had passed since the night of the dinner party with Rob, and she was closer to him than ever. They were virtually inseparable.

One evening, I was in the barn, checking on the horses. Often, Lacey or Jackson would feed them, but I still liked to check on them most nights when I had the time. After I’d done my rounds I decided to go up to the loft and look at my old photos of Lacey. It was hopeless, but I couldn’t stop looking at them.

I climbed the ladder and breathed in deeply the scent of dust and dry hay. The sun was setting in the west and the light flooded in through the window. I grabbed my envelope and the hip flask and took a swig of the whiskey.

Then I sat down on the hay and flicked through the few photos. Such a beautiful girl, and she’d grown into an even more beautiful woman. She was one of those people who grew more and more beautiful as she aged. She was like a work of art, always in progress, always reaching closer and closer toward perfection. That’s why it baffled me that Rob wanted her to go through all those ridiculous cosmetic procedures. He didn’t know what he had.

But could I blame him? I’d had her too, or I’d almost had her, and I didn’t appreciate it either.

As I looked at those old photos, their corners worn from my fingers touching them, I decided that I would do something about it. I didn’t have to watch that guy steal her away from me. She didn’t know it yet, hell, I didn’t even know it, but she was
my
woman. She’d always been
my
woman. I just had to tell her.

There was already an old letter in the envelope and for the first time in years I read the words. It was silly. I’d written it back during my first week at the mansion, seventeen years ago, when I was just a kid. I’d have been in prison if it wasn’t for Lacey’s father, so don’t judge the style of the letter. It’s who I was back then.

This is what it said.

Lacey,

You barely know me, but please listen to me. I know this sounds crazy, and that there’s no way I could possibly know this yet, but I’m the man for you. God made one man for you, and I’m him. I’m your one and only. It’s the truth. Don’t ask how I know it. I just do. The first night I got here, I saw you coming down the stairs, and it was like I was looking at an angel coming down from heaven. I always knew I’d meet an angel some day. The priest said, when my parents died, that an angel watched over us all. I didn’t believe him at the time, but when I saw you his words finally made sense to me. You’re my angel Lacey, and I’m going to make you mine. I swear it. I’m going to take you, like a swooping eagle takes a fish from a mountain lake. There’s nothing you can do about it. You’ve always been mine, and you always will be, no matter what.

Forever yours,

Grant Lucas

I felt strangely emotional as I read the words. I was a different person back then, just a kid, a criminal, and everything about me has changed in the years since. Except for this one thing. I was still in love with Lacey. She was still my girl, my angel. I knew it then, and I knew it now. I hadn’t given her the letter back then, when she was just seventeen, but I should have.