Chapter seven
Juan took one look at Amber when she stepped into the room and knew he and his brothers had made a huge fucking mistake.
Her gaze darted among the ten of them, her steps steady but hesitant, her shoulders braced.
As if expecting a blow. Maybe not a physical one—he had to believe she trusted them enough on that score—but an emotional one?
Yeah, she was waiting for the shoe to drop.
The stark look on her face a painful contrast to the filmy, almost fairylike lace on her summer dress.
All because he and his brothers had assumed that she’d healed enough, trusted them enough, not to get thrown back to the dark place she’d lived for nearly a decade. The place where everything was her fault and she was always to blame.
Arrogant much?
“Amber, come in,” Mantis said, shuffling papers on the table.
“Hold up,” Juan said. His brothers all turned to him, confused by the delay, but he ignored them and approached Amber.
“We fucked up,” he said. She blinked. “You’ve done nothing wrong.
We’re not angry with you. This isn’t anything like that.
I’m sorry we didn’t make that clear when you first walked into the clubhouse.
” Her eyes searched his, and slowly, he held out his left hand.
Over the past several days, it had become a symbol of trust between them when she took his left hand in hers.
His offer to protect her, her acceptance that she had control.
Her gaze dropped before lifting again.
Behind him, Mantis swore, the light dawning on what she’d assumed.
Her eyes scanned the rest of the men in the room before returning her attention to him.
Cautiously, she set her hand in his. He let out a slow, grateful breath that she was still willing to trust him.
He turned, and she stepped to his side, facing his brothers together.
He knew what it looked like, the declaration he’d just made. But right now, only Amber mattered.
“I’m sorry, too,” Mantis said, running a hand through his hair, then over his face. The rest of the Falcons murmured their apologies as well. “We’re concerned for you, Amber. Not about you.”
She hesitated again, then nodded. “Okay,” she said, drawing the word out, still not entirely convinced, but willing to listen. “What is this about?”
Mantis’s lips thinned. The news he’d delivered to the club less than an hour ago wasn’t something any of them were happy about.
“We’ve heard through the network that someone is looking for you,” Mantis answered.
Amber’s hand jerked in his, and her face drained of color. Einstein rushed over with a chair, and she sank into it, not letting go of Juan’s hand. Hawkeye brought a second for him. He’d stand behind Amber all day, but it was more comfortable for her if she could rest their hands on her lap.
“Who? Not Anthony?” she stammered, the fear in her voice tearing a hole in his chest.
Mantis shook his head. “We have no indications it’s your ex. As you know, we have people keeping an eye on him.”
Unlike a lot of the abusers they came across in their work, Anthony had seemed more than happy to let Amber go without turning into a complete psycho.
Juan hated the guy, hated everything about him.
But while Amber’s ex was a lot of things Juan wouldn’t waste his breath on, he wasn’t dumb.
He’d quickly realized that if he didn’t want a scandal, a quiet divorce was in his best interest. Selfish on Anthony’s part, but for once, his selfishness, his self-preservation, worked in Amber’s favor.
“Then who?” she asked.
“A nurse named Adrian Mills.”
Beside him, Amber tipped her head in thought and frowned. “I don’t recall knowing anyone by that name. Who is she?”
“She’s a contract nurse. She’s hired on at various hospitals when they have temporary openings—like when an employee goes out on family leave, or when they are temporarily short-staffed. We don’t know much more than that. We’ve already asked HICC to look into her, though.”
“Where has she worked?” Amber asked. “Is it possible she treated me at one time or another?”
A vise tightened around his chest, and a not-so-subtle ripple of rage coursed through his body. He and emergency rooms had more than a passing acquaintance thanks to some of the foster homes he’d lived in, but thinking of Amber in those same situations was unacceptable.
“It’s possible,” Mantis said. “She works in and around the DC area.”
Amber and her husband had lived in a small, wealthy community in Virginia.
During one of their long talks in the dark of the night and the comfort of her bed, she told Juan that on the rare occasions she visited a hospital, she varied the location and never visited one in her hometown.
Her actions had protected her husband, but he also understood that, in her own way, she’d been protecting herself, too.
He knew too well how dealing with the pain was sometimes easier than answering certain questions.
“What can I do?” she asked.
“I don’t think you should leave the clubhouse alone,” Juan said.
Over the past year, there’d been other situations that required both her and Dottie to have an escort when they left the premises.
She’d been amenable then, but those situations hadn’t been about her, so he wasn’t sure how she’d take his suggestion.
His suggestion that wasn’t really a suggestion.
No way in hell was he going to let her go unprotected.
The room remained silent as she processed the information she’d been given. No one underestimated the impact of it. They’d all come from shitty, abusive backgrounds in one form or another, and the possibility of the past—anyone’s past—making a surprise visit had them all uneasy.
Thirty seconds passed when Amber asked, “Do you know how long this nurse has been looking for me?”
Mantis shook his head. “We heard about it today, but it’s taken a while to travel through the network. Maybe a month? Maybe longer.”
Amber shifted, and his spine tingled with a warning. “Why do you ask?” he asked.
She pursed her lips, then rocked to the side and dug into her jeans pocket. “I don’t think this has anything to do with what you’ve told me. But since it’s two weird things happening at the same time, I should probably mention it.”
She let go of his hand and spread three notes out on the table. He leaned forward as his brothers crowded around.
She didn’t die
She’s in danger. He knows we have her
Don’t you want to see her?
All included the same phone number.
“What are these?” he asked, knowing he wouldn’t like the answer.
“There were four total, but I tossed the first away. It just said, ‘Call me,’ and had this same number.” She pointed to one of the messages.
“I found it tucked under my windshield after dinner at the Boom. I figured it was a mistake, meant for someone else, so I threw it away,” Amber said.
Then setting her finger on the first, she continued.
“I found this one under my windshield the day of the Youth Day Parade. The third two days after that. And this last one”—she set her finger on the one that posed a question—“appeared today. Just before I came home.”
“And you didn’t tell me?” he demanded. Mantis cleared his throat.
“Or anyone?” he added, realizing that the note he’d seen her holding in the lemonade stand was the same as the one now on the table.
Ass that he was, he’d assumed it had been another phone number.
If he hadn’t been so spun up about the thought of her dating, he would have recognized the startled look she’d given him for what it was—confusion, maybe even a little fear. At the very least, concern.
Her brows dropped. “I admit they’re weird, but they aren’t threatening. And I have no idea what they mean. I ran into Leo today, though, and asked him if he could trace the number. He agreed and said he’d get back to me this afternoon.”
“You don’t have any idea what these are about?” Scipio asked.
She hesitated, then shook her head. “I have no idea who ‘she’ is or who ‘he’ might be.” She paused, then added, “When I saw the reference to ‘he,’ I did think of Anthony, but who’s ‘her’? And why would I want to see her?”
Her gaze lingered on the notes, a shadow of something lurking in her eyes. She set her hand on her belly, as if staving off nausea, then took a deep breath and leaned back.
He reached over and twined their fingers together again. His brothers had already noticed his first protective gesture. What was one more?
“Can we keep these?” Scipio asked.
She blinked and looked up. A beat passed, then she nodded. “What now?” she asked on an exhale.
“We have feelers out in the network to gather more information. HICC is looking into Adrian and double-checking Anthony, and you’ve got Leo working on the number,” Mantis recited.
“I think for now, we hang tight. You stay on-site at the clubhouse or, if you need to go out, take one of us. Once we know more, we can make a plan.”
She nodded again, then rose. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go check on Dottie in the kitchen?”
The request didn’t surprise him. The kitchen was her go-to place when stressed. She loved cooking and meal planning and was damn good at it. But it was also where she went to hide from the world. A relatively healthy place, though. Especially because Dottie kept an eye on her.
Mantis nodded, and she turned and held Juan’s gaze. A conversation flowed between them in that brief moment. He’d find her later, and they’d talk privately.
He rose as she left and when the door closed behind her, he faced his brothers for the reckoning he knew would come the moment he stepped in front of Amber and took her hand.
Mantis raised an eyebrow. Scipio, Lovell, Marley, and Hawkeye crossed their arms. The rest—Philly, Dulcie, Viper, and Wesson—watched him with either narrowed eyes or amusement.
He got it. No one wanted Amber hurt. Least of all him.
And while it wasn’t the first time one or the other of them had…
engaged in intimate acts with women they helped, he wasn’t stupid.
Amber was different. She’d lived with them for over a year.
She was like a sister to every one of the men standing in front of him, waiting to hold him accountable.
“She approached me,” he said. “She deserves to have intimacy in her life if she wants it.”
Silence.
“I’m not going to hurt her.” He was certain of that.
In fact, he’d felt a twinge in the last few days that if anything, it would be the other way around.
She’d go off and start her new life in Napa—a life she deserved and one he’d never consider asking her to diverge from—and he’d remain in Mystery Lake.
Him and his memories of her touch, of her sighs, of her soft laughs, of the conversations they had in the deepest part of the night.
What had started as something not quite transactional had morphed into more over the span of four days.
Which made him think the “more” had been bubbling under the surface—at least on his part—for longer than that.
He’d had an inkling of it, of course. Over the past year, it had become second nature for his gaze to seek her out every time he walked into a room.
And a visceral need to make things better coursed through his body when something didn’t go right for her.
The first time he saw the look of disappointment on her face when one of her dishes didn’t turn out the way she hoped, he vowed he wouldn’t let it happen again.
Not surprisingly, life didn’t work that way; disappointments happened.
But he could be—and was—there to remind her that while everything might not be perfect, imperfection wasn’t a reflection of her worth or skill.
And then, of course, his reaction to the possibility of her dating other men hadn’t been exactly that of a platonic friend.
“She does deserve that. And I know you won’t hurt her. But what about you?” Mantis asked. The perceptive bastard. The only way to slip something by Mantis was to avoid him altogether.
His stomach pitched as he lifted a shoulder.
Not quite nonchalantly, but hopefully with some inkling of the resignation he felt.
“If that happens, I’ve lived through worse.
” Mantis, Lovell, Philly, and Viper all raised their eyebrows.
He didn’t want to give their doubt any real estate in his head, but it was hard to ignore given they were all either married or living with their partners.
They, more than the others, more than he, knew how hard it might be to let her go.
“I won’t hold her back from the life she wants,” he said.
His brothers shared a look, then Philly stepped forward. “We know you won’t. But have you thought about what you’d do if she decides she wants you?”