No Magic Moment (Secrets of Stone Book 4) (8 page)

Until his tone turned into a snarl, as soon as he mentioned Diana Pearson.

“But goddammit, now those two are just stubborn peas in a pod—causing trouble where they don’t even realize it.”

My mind crashed back to the here and now—as logic connected the dots about why he looked so familiar. “Wait. Are you—” Data began to connect about why he looked so familiar.
Oh, God.
Was this Michael’s come-and-go weirdo of an uncle? I glared at him harder, almost sure of it. Spending more time at the farm since July, I’d heard bits and pieces about the man, and his rocky past with both him and Diana. Neither of them ever, and I meant
ever,
said a good word about him. “Damn. You’re Michael’s—”

“Get away from her! Right now!”

Michael didn’t “issue” the command. He bellowed it—from at least twenty feet away. Everyone seated in between now craned necks and exchanged murmurs, fascinated by what the commotion was about.

Crap.

Crap
.

I popped my eyes wide toward Michael, silently begging him to tone it down before the photographers sniffed the testosterone on the air, but judging by the shade of red his face had gone, there was little hope for a reel-in.

“Declan!” he boomed. “So help me, if you so much as put a pinkie on her skin, I’ll have you thrown out of here and into the goddamn ocean. Better yet, I’ll do it myself.”

“Michael.” I gritted it while grabbing his arm and twisting as hard as I could. “You need to settle the hell down. We already have stares; we don’t need a scene. All press
isn’t
good press. We don’t need the sharks scenting you in the water.”

“You’re right.” He nodded and inhaled deeply. “I know. You’re right.” His lips thinned as he met his uncle’s stare. “I don’t know what the
hell
you’re doing here, or who you bribed to get in. I just want you gone. So help me Declan, I want your sorry ass out of here or I will make sure security does it for you.”

What the hell
?

Screw
This is Your Life.
I was living
Twilight Zone
. Some furious creature had taken over my boyfriend’s body, and I didn’t know who he was anymore.

Declan didn’t make things any better. The older man straightened and chuckled, actions that antagonized Michael beyond their surface value. Michael clenched his fists repeatedly, and breathed through his nose like a raging bull. I’d never seen him so physically agitated in my life, which only spiked the attention of everyone at the surrounding tables, morbidly curious about the spectacle unfolding at ours.

Security guards appeared in the doorway. Some partygoers joined them, pointing in our direction.

I tugged on Michael’s arm. Desperation inspired boldness. “Please,” I demanded. “Stop this—
both
of you. Security is here. Sit down or take it outside. Michael—we’re about to be front page news again, and not for good reasons this time.”

Declan unfurled another Crisco grin. “Listen to the lady, Mikey. She’s got beauty and brains. How you ever landed a piece of ass so fuckable is a wonder, boy.”

I almost—
almost
—went ahead and told Michael to flatten him.

“
Don’t
talk about her like that, you worthless piece of shit! In fact, don’t talk about her at all. Don’t even look at her. Your ugly face doesn’t deserve the pleasure of her beauty!”

Declan chortled. “Oh hell, you
are
fire and brimstone. What my associates wouldn’t pay to help channel some of that ambition—”

“Shut up,” Michael seethed.

“
Tsk
. You’re passing up a stellar opportunity.”

“I said shut
up
.” He wheeled around, tucking me behind him. “Last warning, you gutter-sucking asshole. Get out of my sight or I will fucking kill you!”

Well, that did it.

Hotel security surged into motion. A verbal threat of that nature was apparently the icing on their red alert cake. Two Andre-sized men bounded at Michael, each grabbing one of his arms and lifting. He had no option about the direction they pulled, toward a side exit used by the banquet servers. I grabbed my handbag and followed behind, heat crawling up my face. Just about everyone watched us leave the room.

“You’ve got the wrong guy!
He’s
the asshole.
He’s
the one you should be worried about!”

One of the guards chortled. “That’s a new one—huh, Pete?”

“Sure thing,” his partner volleyed. “We
never
heard that one before, buddy.”

“Let me guess. You also haven’t been drinking tonight, right?”

They kept up like that, at Michael’s expense, while dragging him down the back corridor. Thankfully, we were now away from prying eyes—and camera lenses.

Finally, I ran to get ahead of them, forcing them to stop. “Officers—please. Can’t you just let him go?”

Michael flashed a glare and growled. “
Margaux
.”

I pushed the invisible mute button for him. Getting into it with him wasn’t going to help the immediate problem. “I promise we’ll go right to the car,” I told the bigger of the two, Pete. “Then we’ll leave the property. I give you my word. I have a driver here waiting for us. Please, enough of this already. We don’t need the bad press.”

Useless. The pair tightened their grip on Michael and kept power-walking toward an exit door ahead.

“Please! Stop!”

I poured on the girly angst, always a sure-fire guy-freezer. Pete didn’t look happy about it, though. “Ma’am, listen. It’s the policy of the hotel. As its security professionals, we have to uphold that policy. He caused a scene and openly threatened another guest. I don’t care if you’re Minnie Mouse and he’s Pluto. It just doesn’t matter. The rules are the rules, and we have to follow them or we lose our jobs. I would love to just send you on your way out that door, but I can’t. I have a wife and a baby on the way. I can’t lose this job, okay?”

“I get it.” I held out both hands, palms spread. “But for one thing, you don’t need to be throwing him around like he just made a pass at your prom date. For another, who will know if we just slip out the back door? No harm no foul, right?” I went for my big guns: the wide kitty-witty eyes. “I’m sorry we’ve caused you trouble, I really am—but there are so many photographers here tonight, and we could really use some privacy. Would that be too much to ask?” Annnd, the even bigger guns. A flash of my wallet, and a little yank on the cash inside. “I have a couple of friends here named Ben who can help make it worth your while.”

Pete glanced at his buddy. Their silent communication wasn’t long but told me everything I needed to know.

“All right,” Pete finally muttered. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you.” I rushed out a breath. “I’d really appreciate it. But…where are you taking us now? The parking lot is in that direction.”

Yes, I was still anxious. We weren’t out of this yet—and I couldn’t help noticing how quiet Michael had gotten, without any help from my mute button. And in this situation, a quiet Michael was a scary Michael. He was either planning or brooding. Neither was something I wanted to deal with at the moment.

“There’s a back exit down here,” Pete explained, “that opens to the beach. If you take the path around to the right, it will bring you out to a parking lot. You can tell your driver to meet you there.”

I looked down at my phone and I wasn’t getting reception at all.

“Dammit. No bars.”

“True that,” he answered. “You’ll have to go around the building a little farther, about a hundred yards that way.” He pointed in the opposite direction of the parking lot he’d just told me about.
What the fuck
?

I narrowed my eyes. Kitty-witty just became pissy wildcat. “Did I mention that this is all to keep the press away from this mess?” I charged.

“Yeah, yeah. We
heard
you, lady.”

“Good—which means you also know not to jack me around, right? Petey, you
don’t
want to fuck with me.”

“Right, right.” Though he groused about it, his face was properly somber while accepting the bills I pushed into his palm. I hoped to God it actually helped the situation.

We emerged from the building. As Pete had said, the beach was straight ahead to the left, the parking lot to the right. The sharp October air was, for once, a welcome sting on my face.

I caught Michael’s stare. Correction: glare. He still struggled a little against the guards, body clenched and face tight. His hair hung in his eyes, thick and sweaty—and damn him, on a purely physical level, pretty sexy.

Lust was
not
made for a moment like this.

“I’m going to go tell Andre where to pick us up, okay?” I told him. “I’ll meet you right back here.”

His expression didn’t change. Not that I expected it to—or that it would’ve been just a tiny bit helpful.

Dammit.

I didn’t have time for this bullshit. He was the one who’d decided to make a death threat to his uncle—in public—and had us thrown out of a charity dinner, with the threat of it being documented by a dozen leading gossip rags. Now he acted like some if not all of it was
my
fault.

I lifted the hem of my dress and stormed off in the direction of a cell phone signal.

Fuck him—and fuck the testosterone-fueled horse he rode in on.

Michael

T
he pair of
hotel thugs—pardon me,
security professionals
—didn’t let up their hold until they’d “escorted” me all the way to the beach. There, the patient knightly thing they’d been pulling with Margaux was dropped like the act it was.

“Okay, asshole.” The burlier of the two, a jackhole named Pete, jerked me away from his buddy, as if dislocating my shoulder would appease the dick growth gods. “Time for you to cool down.”

His buddy grunted as he hurled me into the sand. “Well said, bro.”

“Yeah.” I rolled onto my elbows. Screw the tux; wasn’t like I was going back inside. “He’s a goddamn rocket scientist.”

I dragged a hand through my hair, trailing sand over my face in the doing. Like I fucking cared. Wrath still pummeled my bloodstream and I wasn’t ready to flush it anytime soon. If I stayed enraged with Declan, I didn’t have to think about still being afraid of him.

Yeah.

Even now.

The fear.

Every time I even thought of the man’s face, it burst into my gut all over again, festering until it emerged as the emotion I
could
deal with: the fury. It lent me power over the helplessness…and the guilt. All those years of taking the brunt of his violence because I had no choice, then watching him do the same to Mom. Hating him more every time. Wanting to throw acid on the worm he really was. Dreaming of the day I’d be big enough to fight back, to bash his face in—

Before I could.

Because the coward left.

Between my fifteenth and sixteenth birthdays. Just like that. Not that he’d ever “settled” in with us at the house, thank fuck, but the week between his little “check-in visits” stretched to two. Three. Four. A month. A year. Then ten. Mom and I had been preparing to celebrate that milestone when Dec turned back up like the disease that he was.

Mom and I were older by then. Wiser. I’d filed the restraining order that day. Within a couple of days, the security system was upgraded on the house. I’d even installed a tracking device in Mom’s truck—

But the fear returned. And with it, the anger.

The shit I refused to process, despite Mom’s attempts to get herself “aligned” and move on. Part of that, I understood. Moving on, I could handle—but who the hell wanted to be “aligned” about memories of their mother being thrown against the wall, berated until she cringed into a ball, “disciplined” until there were welts? Bruises that had kept her in the house for days…

Marks that made me pray, with every fiber of my being, for Declan Pearson’s painful death.

A death I’d pleaded even harder for once Margaux exploded into my world.

Because of her, I’d smiled again. Laughed again. Yeah, at first it was at her expense, something I’d never be proud of—but soon, she had me smiling
with
her,
for
her. Didn’t mean the little spitfire didn’t piss me off, but this anger was the good kind. The kind love always conquered at the end of the day. Did I want the canker of Declan anywhere near it?

The answer to that had come tonight—in all its disgusting glory. The poison that hit my soul from the moment I walked into the ballroom and saw that cocksucker’s hands all over Margaux…

The memory clung to my brain worse than the sand on my suit. Then the nausea. The terror. The rage.

Radio sets squawked. Pete and his pal punched their earpieces and yelled that they were on their way to the hotel’s newest emergency. They left without a word, letting me struggle to my feet in a private bath of humiliation.

It’d be at least another ten minutes before Margaux and Andre connected and the car was ready. Before then, it was best for me to lay low. Very low.

I turned and trudged along the beach, grateful as hell for the empty sand and the wind brushing up from the water. Walking off the edge seemed a damn good choice right now. With my phone in my pocket, it’d be easy enough for Margaux to call me back. Only a few key things to focus on now. Breathing, Stepping. Calming.

The air was filled with fall smokiness and a charged chill. The wind carried faint laughter from one of the hotel’s balconies, where a group had decided to take their party outside. I looked across the water, layers of cobalt and silver sliced by the brilliant beam from the Point Loma lighthouse, but called a silent bullshit on the light. If my brain were a ship, it’d be crashed on the rocks by now.

Sort of like the ones just up ahead now.

Sort of.

The boulders were more suited for children’s pirate play and teenage make-out sessions than shattering ship hulls, but they suited my purpose just fine, as well. Finding a perfect crevice, I sat my ass once more in the sand, rested elbows on my raised knees, then dropped my head between them.

What the hell now
?

Coming clean with Margaux was no longer an option I could ignore—but what would she say when I did? The shit with Dec…it wasn’t just a few minor childhood memories. Getting back at him had guided so many decisions in my life. Training in martial arts and maintaining my fitness. Entering law school. Living no more than two hours from Mom, ever.