Chapter six
Four days after her first night with Spencer, as Juan had asked her to call him, Amber stood by the driver’s side door of her car, fingering the fourth note she’d received. The bag of lingerie she’d just purchased in anticipation of her time with him hanging all but forgotten from her wrist.
Don’t you want to see her?
She reread the note for the second time. It included the same phone number as the others. She’d found the third, more ominous than any of the others, two days earlier after leaving lunch with Daphne. She’s in danger. He knows we have her.
After the second note, she’d promised herself she’d tell the Falcons if she received a third. She had no excuse for not saying anything two days ago, other than her time with Spencer was turning her into a giddy teenager with questionable priorities.
She still had no idea what any of them meant, though, and couldn’t fathom who “she” was, or even who “he” was. But she felt the anxiety etched in every word. Whoever kept sliding the tiny scraps of paper under her windshield wipers was sounding more and more desperate.
About what, though?
Or maybe it wasn’t desperation, maybe it was a trap. Maybe the notes were meant to lure her somewhere. Or to someone.
On the other hand, could they be a plea for help?
She gritted her teeth in frustration and glanced around Main Street. It bustled with too many people for her to notice any one person in particular. Fingering the note, she started shoving it into her pocket but paused when a man exiting the Blacksmith restaurant caught her attention.
“Leo!” she called, before giving it any thought. Not typical of her at all and an indication of how the quirky little notes unnerved her.
He swiveled his head, looking for the source of the voice. She lifted her hand and waved. Catching sight of her, he waved back and started her way.
“Amber, it’s good to see you,” Leo Gallardo said, stopping in front of her.
The tech genius was dating Charley’s twin sister, Joey.
Everyone expected the two to tie the knot soon, making Leo Mantis’s brother-in-law.
Family by Falcons standards. More importantly, for her purposes, he worked for HICC, a private security company, on their cyber team. A man with unique skills.
“Can I ask a favor?” she asked.
He frowned, but more as if he didn’t like that she felt the need to get permission before asking. “Of course.”
“If I give you a phone number, can you trace it for me?” She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of him, and his skills, before.
Of everyone in the Falcons’ sphere, he was the most capable of tracking something down.
And if he managed to dig up any information about the notes and their sender, then she could decide what, if anything, to do next.
After telling Spencer and the Falcons, of course.
“Easy,” he replied. “If it’s a burner, I may not be able to tell you more than that, but if not, I can track the owner and usually the location.”
She exhaled in relief. “Thank you,” she said, pulling out her phone. “I’ll text it to you now.” She’d seen the number enough times to have it memorized.
“I need to drop by Joey and Charley’s shop, but I’ll look into it as soon as I get back to the office,” he said, pulling out his phone and tapping the screen. “Got it,” he said. “Anything else?”
She shook her head. “I appreciate it.”
He nodded. “I’ll let you know as soon as I have something.”
“Thank you. Again,” she said. He smiled, then gestured toward her door.
It took her a second to realize chivalry wasn’t dead.
He had no intention of leaving until she was safely in her car.
With a smile of her own, she swung it open, tossed her bag on the passenger seat, and slid in.
Leo closed the door gently, then stepped onto the sidewalk, lifting a hand as she pulled away.
Leaving the downtown area behind, she pushed aside thoughts of the notes and glanced at the bag beside her.
She’d spent the past four nights with Spencer in her room.
After their second night together, he’d asked her to use his real name rather than the handle his team had given him while in the army.
She tripped up every now and then, but she liked calling him Spencer.
She enjoyed the “Juan” part of his personality; it had been one of the reasons she’d approached him rather than one of the other Falcons.
But “Spencer” made him a man, a real person, to her.
Not a myth, not a legend, not a fictional character or illusion.
A man. One with needs, desires, fears, and hopes of his own.
Not that she hadn’t seen him as a unique person before, but using his real name felt a bit like scraping off a layer of veneer—the same beautiful wood lay underneath, but now, she was a tiny bit closer to the grain.
It shouldn’t matter to her, but it did. Just as it mattered that he liked talking with her, lying with her, curling up and sleeping—just sleeping—with her as much as he liked kissing her.
As much as he liked touching her. And he did like touching her.
She wasn’t so out of practice that she didn’t recognize the signs of his pleasure.
Or, she was pleasantly surprised to discover, her own.
After everything Anthony had done, she truly hadn’t been sure she’d ever enjoy being touched by a man again, much less sexually.
Spencer was changing her mindset, though.
No, not changing it. He was giving her a chance to explore, test, experiment, and discover for herself what she did and did not like.
What she was and was not comfortable with.
Even when that point shifted and moved each time they were together.
Tonight she planned to leap, rather than step, forward, though.
Thanks to encouragement from Daphne, she’d even bought herself a cute silk pajama set—a pair of boy shorts and a tank top with thin, suggestively flimsy, straps.
And condoms. She’d bought a pack of those, too.
She wasn’t sure they’d use them tonight, but each time they were together the desire for that level of intimacy grew.
So far, she’d explored his body with her hands, and she knew what he looked like, how he sounded, how he responded when he came.
Tonight, she intended to let herself be the subject of his exploration.
Tonight, she’d put her trust in him and choose to give a man access to her body in a way she hadn’t in a very, very long time.
A nervous smile played on her lips as she turned onto the clubhouse driveway. Nerves weren’t always bad, though, she reminded herself. Sometimes they were there to remind her to be brave. That some things were worth being brave for. And reclaiming this part of her life was worth being brave for.
After parking her car beside Mantis’s truck, she grabbed her bag and purse and headed to the clubhouse door, her thoughts shifting from Spencer to the night’s dinner as she crossed the parking area.
She was mentally tweaking the salad dressing, adding a touch more mustard than she’d originally planned, when she stepped into the main lodge room and pulled up short.
She counted as her eyes skimmed the room. Ten of the fifteen Falcons filled the space. Every one of them watching her.
“Uh, is everything okay?” she asked. Her gaze touched on Spencer, who stood with his arms crossed and his head tilted, before it flickered back to Mantis. As the president, the others would look to him to answer.
Mantis’s hazy green eyes watched her with concern, a small frown shadowing his expression. “Let’s go to the meeting room,” he said.
Her stomach swooped. Rapidly, her mind filtered through the past few weeks, searching for any reason she might have upset them. For something she’d done wrong. Something that would cause them all to look at her as if they were sorry for what they were about to do or say.
“I…” She paused and cleared her throat. “Can I put my bags in my room and meet you there?” she asked, hoping to buy herself some time. Time to figure out what she’d done and how to make it right.
Mantis hesitated, then nodded. “We’ll meet you there.”
She stood frozen as the men filed out, their work boots beating a familiar tattoo on the wood floors.
Spencer brought up the rear, turning to look at her as his brothers disappeared down the hallway.
He hesitated, then pivoted and came toward her.
She fought not to recoil from him. He wouldn’t hurt her.
She knew that. Still, she didn’t do well with ambiguity or unknowns, and not knowing what to expect made her nervous. The bad kind of nervous.
He stopped in front of her, his emerald-green eyes searching hers.
She saw something there but couldn’t tell if it was pity or some other emotion.
Slowly, he reached out and uncurled one of her hands from where it gripped the bag carrying the sexy set she’d bought herself.
The thought of it now twisting her stomach.
He slid his palm against hers, wrapping her fingers in his heat. When had she grown so cold? Lifting her hand, he dropped a small kiss on her palm, then, with his right hand, he brushed his fingertips across her cheek. “It’s going to be okay,” he said. “I promise you that. You’ll be okay.”
“What’s going on, Spencer?” she asked, her voice little more than a trembling whisper.
He brought her hand to his lips again, then gave it a squeeze before releasing her. “Just put your bag down and join us. We’ll explain everything.”
She took a deep breath through her nose, quelling the nausea rising in her stomach, and nodded.
He held her gaze, then turned and walked away.
Blinking back tears, she clutched her bag and purse and darted up the stairs to her room.
Tossing the bags on her bed as she walked to her window, she stared out at the vast pine forest. Resting her hands on the ledge, she set her forehead to the warm glass, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. Then another.
Had she done something wrong? Again, she racked her brain and could come up with nothing. But that had frequently been the case with Anthony, too. He’d seen flaws, disloyalty, and betrayal at every turn when she’d done nothing to earn those accusations.
She’d been to enough therapy over the last year to know that what Anthony saw, what he perceived, was nothing more than a figment of his wild, controlling imagination.
His need to manipulate her. And that she had not, in fact, “earned” any of his abuse, contrary to what he made her believe.
But the behavior of the Falcons was so out of character for them that it threw her back to that older version of herself.
To that hesitant, confused, scared version of herself.
The version that accepted she’d been in the wrong because it was easier than facing the truth.
Or perhaps not easier, but definitely more familiar.
She took another deep breath and reminded herself that she wasn’t that woman anymore. She had to trust herself. She hadn’t done anything wrong. Which meant that either the Falcons were mistaken in whatever they were thinking, or their concern was about something entirely different.
She paused on that thought. Her instinct had her shrinking away, assuming that the blame, whatever it may be, rested with her. But maybe it wasn’t that at all. Maybe they were concerned about her, and she’d misread the situation.
The note in her pocket fluttered to mind. Had they found out about those? She didn’t know how they could have. She’d told no one, and she’d only just given Leo the number.
Even if that was the case, though, she doubted her failure to tell them would cause the looks she’d seen downstairs. So if not that, then what?
On another deep breath, she pushed away from the window. There was only one way to find out.
On a whim, she grabbed the other two notes she’d kept and shoved them into her pocket alongside the fourth she’d received that day.
Then, with another look at the place she’d called home for the past fourteen months, the place she’d found safety, shelter, and security, she turned and headed downstairs.