Chapter 8
EIGHT
There was utter silence after the door quietly closed behind the men.
“He didn’t do it,” Ellen said quietly but firmly.
“Absolutely not.” Nicole was just as firm.
Chloe looked at them. They meant every word. There was nothing ambiguous in their body language or voices.
Something eased in her heart, a slight lightening of the oppressive heaviness that had weighed her down as she listened to the police lieutenant interrogating Mike.
She knew nothing about him, really. And what did she know about men, anyway? Practically nothing. Did she think that just because he’d given her her first orgasm, he was a good guy? Sex and decency were not linked together. She was old enough to know that.
But still…something inside her resisted the notion that he was capable of hurting that woman the way the lieutenant had said.
When he’d touched her in the hotel room, his huge, strong hands had been incredibly tender.
She was in uncharted territory with only her admittedly weak knowledge of men and sex to go on, but she just couldn’t see Mike hurting a woman like that.
She didn’t know Mike at all, but Ellen and Nicole did.
“If there’s one thing Mike is incapable of, it’s hurting a woman,” Ellen said, rocking Gracie in her arms.
Nicole rubbed her belly. “Absolutely,” she said. “He’s one of the nicest guys in the world.”
Their words were directed at her. Chloe had no idea why. She had nothing to do with this. “I’m sure you’re right,” Chloe said gently. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think he beat that poor woman up, either.”
Latent violence had its clear markers. She had an instinctive feel for it.
It was why she shied away from her ‘father’ all those years.
Subconsciously, Chloe had made a study of it in men.
When her PI Amanda uncovered what had happened to her at the age of five, she understood her unconscious obsession.
After Amanda lifted the rock and found her biological family, Chloe understood her entire life had been marked by the uncontrolled violence of her mother’s boyfriend. That was why she’d made an unofficial study of violent men.
She volunteered in a shelter in London and she’d seen quite a few members of that awful species.
Violent men were of course violent for individual reasons but there was an awful sameness to their basic nature.
Any calm they displayed was only skin deep.
Violent men had violent emotions seething beneath an often charming verneer.
They had fragile egos that could shatter at a misplaced word.
Mike had struck her as the opposite. He’d been a decorated Marine, a member of SWAT, men notable for their self control. The vibes that came from him were quiet calm and strength and no ego.
“I don’t think Mike is the type, so you don’t have to convince me,” she offered.
Nicole and Ellen looked at each other.
“Yes,” Nicole said. “We do.” She opened her hand in invitation. “Come on. Let’s go in the living room. I don’t think anyone has any appetite for food anymore.”
No. Chloe’s stomach was as tightly closed as a fist.
In the vast living room, without seeming to, Nicole and Ellen boxed Chloe in between them. Chloe liked them both but she didn’t like being manipulated.
Once they were seated, Nicole and Ellen shared another look in which it was silently decided Nicole would take the lead.
“Chloe, my dear. You really must believe us when we say Mike is absolutely innocent of the charges. He—"
“Oh, I believe you,” Chloe said, looking from one tense face to the other. “Not that my opinion means anything.”
“Yes it does,” Ellen said softly. “It really does.”
“Mike likes you.” Nicole touched Chloe’s hand.
“I know you got an image in there of a guy who sleeps around a lot and I can’t say that’s not true.
Unfortunately it is. You know that old saying about looking for love in the wrong places?
That’s Mike. But Mike has never once brought a woman around for us to meet.
And both Sam and Harry say he’s never had a stable relationship.
We have never seen him act the way he has around you.
He couldn’t take his eyes off you. We think he’s very taken with you and maybe—" her hand tightened around Chloe’s. “Maybe you’re not indifferent?”
Chloe flashed on the hotel room, Mike’s mouth on hers, his heavy weight against her, thick penis rubbing against the lips of her sex…her body simply lit up at the memory.
Curse her fair skin. Chloe didn’t need to look in the mirror to know her face was stop-light red. She saw no reason to lie when her very skin was flashing the truth. “No,” she confessed quietly. “I’m not.”
Ellen smiled gently. “I didn’t think so.” She shot another glance at Nicole. “We didn’t think so. And the reason why we’re being so nosy and probably annoying you no end by butting into your affairs is that we want Mike to find some happiness. He deserves it.”
Nicole leaned forward. “He saved our lives. Both our lives. We’ll tell you the stories some other time, but the truth of it, the thing you have to know, is that when our lives were in danger, Mike didn’t hesitate.
Sam and Harry, well, they were in love. It was a given they’d put their lives on the line.
Mike did what he did out of devotion to his brothers, but also because, for all his tomcatting around, he’s like an old-fashioned knight.
We’re worried for him. Worried that he’s been framed for something he didn’t do.
That he’s in a mess he can’t get out of. ”
“And we’re worried that at the moment he’s found a woman he can care for, he’s going to lose his chance, together with his freedom,” Ellen said bluntly.
She squeezed Chloe’s hand. “Please tell me this won’t spoil anything.
Please tell me you’ll give Mike a chance.
I’ve never seen him look as happy as he did today.
He couldn’t keep his eyes off you. He so deserves a chance at love. Don’t take that away from him.”
Both women were looking at her with hope in their eyes.
Chloe suddenly stood, crossing the room to her purse. They desperately wanted to help Mike and, God help her, so did she. There was one woman in the world she trusted to get to the truth of the matter. It was the one number she had on speed dial.
Nicole and Ellen were watching her, vibes of hope and worry all but quivering around them.
“Okay. You want to help Mike? So do I.” She smiled at the voice that answered.
“Amanda? This is Chloe. Yes, in San Diego. Amanda, I need your help.” She looked at the two women watching her and, for the first time in her life, felt the sharp, warm bite of family. “We need your help.”
“Let’s go over it again,” Kelly said in the interrogation room and Mike stifled a groan. They’d gone over it and over it and over it.
The bare, ugly room smelled of male tension and despair. Probably what a prison cell smelled like. Mike hoped to God he’d never find out, but it didn’t look good.
Mike couldn’t blame Kelly. Mila had ID’d him as the man who’d attacked her the minute she woke up from surgery.
Defending the real son of a bitch who’d put her in the hospital.
Mike understood the police thought they had an air tight case.
They didn’t. But they did have enough evidence to keep him in jail until a trial date could be set.
His brothers wouldn’t allow that. They’d meet any bail the DA set, which made Mike even angrier because it just so happened that this was a tight moment for money.
They’d just bought ten thousand acres of land in Baja to use as a law enforcement training center and shooting range for Mexican police trainees who were fighting a vicious drug war.
It had been Ellen’s idea and it was a good one but the cost of the huge tract of land and creating ranges and shooting houses had drained them.
RBK would have to borrow the money to make his bail.
Then his brothers would borrow even more to get him a high-priced criminal lawyer.
RBK would go into the hole because of him. The two families would have to tighten their belts because of him. Because he’d behaved like a hormonal teenager instead of a responsible adult.
The thought made him sick.
He was innocent. His brothers should just let him rot here until evidence proving him innocent came up or until the case went to trial. Sam and Harry wouldn’t allow that, but he wished they would. Just leave him here and let the truth wind its way to him.
Mike didn’t want to go home, anyway. He didn’t want to face Ellen and Nicole and above all, he didn’t want to face Chloe.
The look on her face when she’d heard what he’d done…
Mike didn’t have anywhere to go with the burning shame inside him.
That sense of hope he’d had since he’d set eyes on her, the glowing warmth in her eyes when she looked at him, those hot tender kisses promising much more—all gone.
Mike couldn’t stand the thought of the disappointment she must be feeling, how confused and hurt she must be.
Fuck.
He’d faced gunfire and mortars without flinching, but the idea of watching a pale Chloe avert her gaze when she saw him—couldn’t do it. He simply couldn’t do it.
He deserved to rot in jail. Not because he’d done what they were accusing him of—he hadn’t hurt that woman in any real way— but because he had twenty years of drinking and fucking around behind him with no excuses.
He’d spent twenty years rolling out of beds he shouldn’t have been in, having fucked women he didn’t care about.
What did that make him?
“I went to a bar called The Cave,” he began again, voice calm and remote. “I got there at around midnight. I met a woman there. We talked briefly—"
There was a knock at the door that surprised both Mike and Kelly. You don’t interrupt an interrogation, that was an iron rule. Kelly’s jaw clenched and Mike felt sorry for the rookie who didn’t know better on the other side of the door.