Wrong then Right (A Love Happens Novel Book 2) (27 page)

Drink. Take away your weakness. Your cumbersome need for the woman sleeping beside you. Drink and make it all go away, and silence my voice along with it.

Eleven... Twelve...

That merciless voice had a fucking point.

But, the twisted thing was, he didn’t really want to drink. Sure, a simmering appetite for it still lived inside him, snaking through his veins like drops of heavy crude oil in clear, clean water. Probably would for life. But what was so unsettling is that he’d spent the last six days working an off-the-books hostage recovery detail and not once had he fought the craving. In truth, the desire hadn’t even reared its ugly head. There was no need to hide his shaking hands or inability to sleep. No need to ignore Nolan as he watched him like a hawk, ready to catch any of Beck’s fuck up’s before Ash noticed, or before he got one of them hurt. Hell, he’d been sharper and more focused than ever. Back to the Beck he’d been in his heyday. The only thoughts in his crystal clear mind were about the mission and about his girl.

He was pretty sure a guy lost his man card when he spent a decent chunk of his alone time comparing the sound of a woman’s sneeze to that of a newborn kitten’s meow, even though he did it while wearing camouflage, three different colors of face paint, and a myriad of firearms. But damn, he couldn’t get her off his mind. Habits were a bitch to break and while he was one step ahead of his battle against alcohol, he was losing by a landslide when it came to keeping Hope in the hook-up department. She’d rapidly become his habit of choice and giving her up wouldn’t be easy. Matter of fact, he didn’t really want to. Beck wanted to keep her. For a good long time.

And therein lied the rub. Hope Coleson made him both a stronger man and a weaker one, at the same time. Hell, he’d brought home pet fish just so he could see her smile. As Grady would say, Beck was in a pickle.

“Geez, what is it with you and that ball?” Her sleepy voice was muffled by the pillow, but it went straight to his heart and brought a grin to his face.

Christ, his goddamn cheeks ached from smiling so much.

Rolling his head to look at her, he did it again. Smiled. Long wisps of hair stuck up in all directions and a crease from the cotton pillowcase lined the side of her face. She’d been asleep for all of an hour, but managed to look like she’d been under for days. And she was so fucking beautiful he felt it in his solar plexus.

“My way of counting sheep,” he said, tossing it one more time for good measure. “Go back to sleep, honey.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Sitting up, she tucked the sheet under her arms and crossed her long, bare legs Indian style. His knee hurt just watching. Pushing her hair back with flattened palms, she yawned. “I’m used to being at work, anyway. Why do you throw the ball?”

It helped. Hell if he knew why. “Why did you live in your car for a month?”

She snorted. “Because I don’t need anybody to bail me out. I take care of myself. My problems are my own.” The sheet slipped as she listed her reasons, exposing some sweet boob cleavage. “I do what I need to, so I can get by.”

He lifted a brow in understanding. “Right. And I throw a ball.”

Enough said on that subject.

Reaching out, he traced a callused fingertip over the tattoo on the inside of her wrist, then threaded their fingers together in a tight hold. “Why’s your crown broken, princess?”

“If I tell you, I’ll need to borrow your ball.” She smiled, trying too hard to be funny, then gave up the pretense when he didn’t laugh. “God, I hated being called that word. Princess. But, it feels different when you say it.”

“How so?”

Her look was thoughtful. “Less demeaning, I guess.”

“Who called you that?” he asked, when she concentrated on their clasped hands without elaborating.

Swallowing, she looked up. “My mother.” It was whispered, like a secret.

He hid his surprise, expecting to hear her father. Ash mentioned Marshall Coleson thought his only daughter walked on water. Gave her everything she could ever want. And from the sound of it, that included a successful vineyard, if only she’d take it. But, even surrounded by things stacked upon things, Ash said she was still the loneliest little girl he’d ever seen.

“And that was a bad thing? My mother called us hoodlum B and hoodlum G. Still does.”

“Not bad, just...” She ran her finger across a seam in the sheet, picking at the row of stitches. “She made me pretend I was a princess locked in the tower, waiting for my prince. But she was the one who locked the door.”

He waited. And she worked up the words.

“She was a maid for a wealthy family and we lived in their garage. Above it, actually, in an apartment that was barely bigger than this room. It had two windows and one door. Only the small burner worked on the stove and it would glow bright red no matter where I set the knob.” Lifting up her right hand, she waggled her fingers. “Damn thing burned my fingerprints off more than once.”

He didn’t laugh. This wasn’t a funny story.

Making a face like he was a stick in the mud, she continued in a small, steady voice. “My mom would be in the big house all day. Cooking and cleaning, I think. I wasn’t allowed to leave the room without her permission. I had to stay there by myself. She put a lock on the outside of the door and every time she left, she would lock me in, not a millimeter of light between inside and out. Not even a playing card would fit. Remember you’re a princess, she’d say, waiting for your prince. A princess waits and she doesn’t cry, because if she does, her prince won’t come. And you want a prince to love you, right, Hope?” The sheet slipped another inch when she shrugged. “It was supposed to be a game, but I didn’t like to play it very much.”

“Jesus Christ, Hope. What the hell do you mean, it wasn’t bad? That’s fucking terrible. It’s child abuse. It’s imprisonment. It’s a bunch of goddamn felonies, is what it is.”

She shook her head, a curtain of dark hair falling over her shoulder. “It wasn’t so terrible. I could hear the vineyard workers outside the window and I would sit and listen. The birds would sing in the fruit trees nearby and I would play with my paper dolls. When I was seven, she died. I lived in the big house then. And I’m not a fan of fairy tales now.”

Her tone said it all. End of story.

Beck fought an overwhelming urge to make a hit list. “Who took care of you?”

“Rosa. She’s a housekeeper who took care of my brother when he was little, too. She’s an angel. And my dad took care of me, too, because as it turned out, my mom was doing more than just cooking and cleaning for her boss. I didn’t get to see him much before she died, but after, I could. He was an okay guy. He let me hang out with him. As long as I didn’t talk when he was on the phone, I could sit in his office and watch him work. I learned how to balance a checkbook, negotiate the freight charges on an overseas container of goods, and string together a line of swear words that got my mouth washed out with soap. Then there was the time that he and my brother thought it would be a good idea to take an eight-year-old girl hunting with them. And I was having a great time, too. Until I watched them shoot and field dress a deer. I cried for days and refused to eat meat for two years.”

Beck wasn’t surprised. He’d seen Ash’s skills with a knife firsthand.

“Do you always use the word
was
when referring to your dad?”

She seemed shocked that she’d done it. Or maybe that he’d noticed. “I don’t really see him anymore. I take care of myself, remember?” She smiled, her first real one since the conversation began. “He means well, but I...” She hesitated. “I guess I have baggage. I need to make my own way, you know?”

“I know, honey.” Reaching out, he wrapped her in his arms, understanding why Ash felt the need to protect her. And why he’d said it was about as easy as herding cats. “And you will. Hell, you already are.”

“Yep.” She nodded against his chest. “I’m making happily ever after my bitch.”

Damn it, he was smiling again as he shifted to lie down, noticing the trusting way she curled herself into him. Heads on the same pillow, eyes locked together, he gently pushed the hair away from her face. “You don’t want the fairy tale?”

“No.” A wrinkled creased her brow. “At least, I don’t think so. I don’t want to be saved, if that’s what you mean. Or handled with kid gloves. I see myself as an independent, kick ass kind of princess.” Eyes widening, she grinned wickedly, naughty written all over her face. “Hey, I just thought of my own personal fairy tale. You want to hear it?” Nodding, because
hell, yeah
he wanted to hear it, she continued. “Once upon a time, there was a horny princess, who’d dated every douche bag in the land. She didn’t need her Prince Charming to ride in on a white horse...” she trailed off suggestively, giggling. “She just needed him to be hung like one.”

Laughing, she buried her face in his throat, and the Hope that he knew, the confident, fun loving girl who wasn’t afraid of anything, was back in his arms again.

Hugging her to his chest, they laid silently in near darkness, the only noise coming from the ceiling fan and the faint sound of their breathing, completely in sync. For long minutes, he stared at the swirling blades above him while Hope slept, recalling his grueling SERE training days, early in his career. Learning, as a highly trained operative, how to survive captivity and all that came with it. And he thought of her, as an innocent little girl, living it.

Jingle Bells pierced the air and Beck sat straight up in bed, dislodging a soundly sleeping Hope. She grumbled but didn’t wake, blindly hooking a leg over his as she rolled to her back. He glanced at the clock through gritty eyes, shocked to see almost four hours had passed. He must have slept, too, because it felt like twenty minutes. The tinny sound of Jingles Bells rang out again and he cursed quietly, reaching over her to grab the offending phone off the nightstand.

The message icon was blinking and he knew what it was before he tapped the screen. There wasn’t a picture attached to the threat this time, but much worse. High resolution video showed a completely topless—an mostly bottomless—smiling and dancing Hope Coleson, the catcalls of an entertained audience providing a quality soundtrack.

The sender had been kind enough to attach a note.
Which headline do you prefer? Rich Girl Gone Wild -OR- Coleson Creek Vineyards Owner dies of Heart Attack while watching eleven o’clock news.

The message that followed made the sender’s intentions clear.
Daddy will not be proud.

Scrolling down, Beck read every text this lunatic had sent, dating back to last spring, before they’d met at Sam’s wedding. Some messages were pathetic, simply in their futile attempts to instill fear and intimidation. Some were vulgar. Some were vague. But they all had an underlying message, which was that Hope was a failure at life and a disappointment to her father, and the only way to redeem herself was to go back to the vineyard.

“Hope.” He gently shook her. “Honey, wake up. Some asshole just sent you hate mail.”

After a few more attempts, she propped an eye open, throwing an arm over her head and groaning. “Sweet baby Jesus, don’t you ever freaking sleep?”

Beck did it again. Smiled. It was becoming a real fucking problem, too. “Unless you want to be the top story on
TMZ
tomorrow night, you might want to take a look at this.”

That got her attention.

“Ignore it,” she said, throwing the phone down on the rumpled bed before padding naked into the bathroom. “Whoever it is, they’re bluffing.”

Beck grabbed it again, scrolling through her limited contact list, looking for similarities as he pulled on a pair of jeans. Her phone book had only six names listed, he and Ash accounting for two of them.

“Beck. I told you to ignore it,” she said pointedly, walking back in the room. Turning her back to him, she bent over and grabbed his t-shirt off the floor, flashing him a centerfold worthy shot from behind. Slipping it over her head, the hem hit just above her knees. “I’ll change my number again and the texts will stop for awhile. I think I know who it is, anyway.”

“Who?”

“My brother.” Snagging the phone out of his hand, she looked at the video again, then cringed. “Oh, my God, that means he’s seen this! Oh, that’s gross! Why would he do that?”

She thought Ash was her cyber stalker? No. No way.

The big man was pimping him for information regularly, but used visible restraint when Beck held firm to her privacy. A few times a week, he’d linger after a meeting or loiter around the office, waiting for an appropriate time. When it came, he’d plainly ask, “Is Hope okay? I need details.” Beck would nod but say nothing, and Ash would glare, then go on with his day. The
she better be okay or I’m gonna kick your ass from here to Nevada
went without saying. It was a matter of time before he was at the front door.

Ash wasn’t sending those messages. He was levels above something so trivial. And they’d be a shitload scarier if he was behind them.

“I don’t think so, honey. That’s not something a guy would send his sister. There’s a definite agenda behind this, but it’s an amateur.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she pressed, holding her arms out. “Nothing can be done about it, Beck. Don’t you get it? The police won’t investigate the sender of these messages, they won’t try to catch the person who stole my money, much less get it back for me, they won’t even return my calls anymore!” Her hands dropped in dejected acceptance.

Staring at her in utter shock, Beck had to count to ten before his head exploded.

The bomb of information she’d dropped in those few, short sentences snapped the puzzle pieces together. Sleeping in her car. Working at a strip club. A steady diet of generic peanut butter. The blood pounded through his veins as his anger flared. Not at her. Never at her. But at who had done this to her.

Gripping her shoulders lightly, he bent to look her straight in the baby blue’s, dialing back his temper. “Answer each of my questions carefully, one at a time, okay?” Eyes narrowing, she opened her mouth to protest his demands, but he cut her off. “How many times have you changed your number?”