The Men With the Golden Cuffs (33 page)

How could she already miss them? They were sitting not five feet away, but they were lost to her as though they were gone, never to be seen again. She wouldn’t see them again. Not really. She would move through the days, but she wouldn’t really share them. Adam and Jake would be around, but more like accessories when before they had become essential. She’d come to rely on them far more in a week than she ever had her husband, and they had been married for years.

And someday soon, they would catch this guy. She knew they would. They would honor that promise. They would catch him and she would be safe, and they would move on. She would move on. Except she wouldn’t. She hadn’t moved in years, not emotionally. She’d worked on her career and put up barricades to everyone except her small group of friends. When Adam and Jake were gone, she wouldn’t move on. She would simply move deeper inside herself until the only emotion she ever felt was typed out of her soul and placed on the internet for all to see.

“Honey? Are you all right?” Chris asked, reaching out and covering her hand with his.

She shook her head. “Nope. But I don’t have another way to be right now.”

He eyed her for a moment. “Are you sure about that?”

“Chris, you weren’t there this morning. You didn’t hear some of the things he said to me, and Adam hasn’t said anything at all. Trust me. I know exactly where I stand with those two. I was a convenient lay.”

“I don’t know about that.” Chris sat back, his eyes trailing to the table beside them where Jake and Adam sat. Their food had come, but neither seemed to be digging in.

“Well, I do. Men are jerks.” Bridget leaned in as though ready to go off on one of her tirades.

“No. This is my turn.” Chris didn’t often use that sharp bark, but when he did, he meant business. Bridget sighed and nodded. Chris turned his gaze to Serena. “You know what Bridget is doing, right? She’s going to agree with everything you say because she thinks what you need right now is a completely supportive friend, but I think what you need is someone to actually talk to. What do you want, sweetheart? I can sit here and cuss out men with Bridge or I can ask you some very specific questions.”

She wanted to listen to Bridget wail because it would soothe her. She wanted them to simply tell her she was right about everything, but she simply couldn’t. “Ask away.”

“Serena, they don’t look like two men who are eager to get away from you.”

“Then you’re not looking close enough.” The words sounded stubborn coming out of her mouth.

“I’m watching them.” Chris had a good line of sight to the table. “They both keep looking over here.”

Well, she had the obvious answer to that one. “My life has been threatened numerous times. They’re bodyguards. They’re doing their jobs.”

“I don’t think so. They’re worried and not about your life. Look, honey, I’ve been around a lot longer than you have. I know men. I can spot a playboy from a mile away. Neither one of those men even glanced at Bridget’s cleavage, and she has the girls on full display.”

Bridget shrugged. “It’s true. I even opened another button when I found out they would be with you. No man can resist these double Ds. I hate to say it, but I think Chris might be right. They’re either crazy about you or gay. The boob test doesn’t lie.”

Serena stared down at her drink. “You don’t understand, guys. Think about it. They like to share a woman, and Jake is fairly hardcore when it comes to the whips and chains stuff. I’m completely open to both lifestyles. It’s just easy. They couldn’t really care about me and have acted the way they did this morning.”

“Yes, because love is always rational,” Chris said sadly. “I love my boyfriend, and we have said some of the most hurtful things in the world to each other. Sweetie, a man who is really passionate about you, who loves you to the core, can be deeply cruel when that love is threatened.”

“All I asked for when we started this thing was a little kindness.” It hadn’t been that much.

Chris sighed. “There’s nothing kind about passion. It can be, but you’re expecting love to be one way, and it’s not. It sure as hell isn’t going to be with two men. You have two men with two hearts and two pasts to deal with. Have their lives been all sunshine and roses? You know we react the way we do because of what life has taught us. Ask yourself the question. What has life taught those two men? Did that factor into the way they reacted to some spectacularly bad news? Was what they did really unforgivable?”

Unforgivable? What did that really mean? But even if Chris was right, maybe she was simply too damaged to ever make this work. He’d talked about the way the past informed how a person dealt with the present. Her past had taught her that she made very bad judgment calls. She couldn’t trust herself any more than she could trust them. She’d made the mistake of throwing herself into this when she’d known damn well it wouldn’t work out.

But then that was just what she did. Nothing worked out how she’d planned. Even her writing career. She’d had visions of being acclaimed and beloved, but mostly she’d gotten scorn and derision from anyone outside the erotic romance community. And now someone took such singular exception to her work that she required bodyguards. Everything she did seemed to isolate her, to push her further and further away from the white picket fence and kids. She just couldn’t see why her white picket fence couldn’t go around a dungeon. And why couldn’t there be two guys in her dream house?

Her fantasies were harmless. Why was she being punished for them? Why would any woman be punished for them?

Bridget took her other hand. “Hon, I know I can be a bit much, but even I can see you’re miserable and it isn’t all about the asshole who’s sending you nasty messages.”

“And a snake,” Serena mentioned. God, she couldn’t get that out of her head.

Bridget’s eyes got wide. “A snake? In your car? Like
Sweetheart in Chains
?”

Chris turned a bright red. “He’s pulling stuff out of your books and using it against you?”

Serena nodded. “Yep. Makes me wish I hadn’t written all that creepy stuff. I think I’ll give up the romantic suspense. The next time I write a stalker, he’s going to leave fluffy bunnies behind. Living fluffy bunnies. I hope he hasn’t read
Missing in Joy
.” What she’d done to her former FBI profiler character had been really awful.

Chris stood up and stalked to the next table, his hands clenched into fists. He stared down at Jake and Adam. “You tell me you’re going to kill this guy. You better kill him, or I swear to god, I will.”

When Chris went into protective mode, he went all out.

Jake looked up calmly. “I promise. I don’t promise I’ll do it quickly.”

“We’re going to take care of her,” Adam said, finally looking at her. There was a hollow look in his eyes that she was pretty sure matched her own. “We’ll take care of her whether she likes it or not.”

Chris sat down at the table with her bodyguards and started asking all kinds of pointed questions.

Bridget poured Serena another drink. “They don’t seem like men who are happy with the day’s outcome. I hate that. I sound so reasonable, but Chris is in protect-his-women mode. So now I have to be the voice of reason. Yuck.”

Serena felt a faint smile tilt her lips up. She loved Bridget. Reasonable or not. “I think they would have preferred to keep me in line with sex, and now they can’t do that.”

Bridget frowned. “Really? So they’ve been completely in control?”

Jake hadn’t been. He’d lost it the night before. He’d taken her when he’d known he shouldn’t. And Adam hadn’t reacted like a man who’d gotten a woman under his thumb. He’d fought with his best friend because he hadn’t been included in their deeply passionate time together. He’d demanded time of his own.

“No. It doesn’t seem that way. I guess they could be playing a game with me, but I don’t think so. It didn’t feel like it at the time. It felt real, but this morning felt real, too.” This morning had damn near killed her.

“I know. But that was inevitable. People in love fight.” Yep. Bridget was being way too reasonable.

“They’re not in love.” They hadn’t said anything beyond they would like to try a relationship. It was far too early to think about love.

“You are.” Bridget let the words drop like a potential mine waiting to go off and blow up in her face.

Serena decided to defuse that bomb the only way she knew how. A little bit of truth and a whole lot of optimistic lying. “Maybe, but I can fall out, too. Hey, I thought I was in love with Doyle. I’m cured of that, and I was actually married to him.”

She stood, stretching a little. She was sore in a way that reminded her just how well they had used her body the night before. It had been years since she’d had sex, and she’d never had it the way they had given it to her. Hard and rough with an edge of real promise. Or she was just really good at making up fiction in her head and it had been simple sex, the act of two bodies coming together out of need and biology.

“I’m going to run to the bathroom.” She needed a minute of quiet. She needed to get her head together. She wasn’t going to cry in the middle of the restaurant.

Jake and Adam were already standing.

“I can surely go to the restroom alone,” Serena said. Had she gotten to the point that she couldn’t even have a single private moment?

Adam walked off, he and Jake exchanging glances.

“He’ll check it out,” Jake explained. “Bridget, would you mind coming with us? Is the bathroom completely interior? No windows?”

Bridget nodded, following as Jake started to walk toward the bathroom, Serena’s elbow firmly in his hand. “It’s small. Just two stalls. No windows. I’ll go in with her.”

Jake smiled back at her. “Thank you.”

They got to the bathroom as Adam was exiting.

“It seems safe enough. No one is in there. Do you want me to stand outside the stall?” Adam asked, his jacket moving just enough to show a hint of dark metal at his side. His SIG Sauer.

“No,” Serena said quickly. She couldn’t think of anything worse than having to go into that bathroom with one of the men listening in. “No one’s in there. No one can get in. I’ll take Bridget.”

“I’ve listened to her pee many times,” Bridget said, still staring at that place where his gun had flashed.

Serena threw her a look, but Bridget just shrugged and opened the door.

The minute the door closed, she took a deep breath. Just being around them was hard.

“Holy crap, Serena. He has a gun.” Bridget was staring at the door.

“He’s a bodyguard. It’s kind of part of his uniform.” Serena looked down and found her hands were shaking. She wanted to walk right back out and beg one of them to hold her. She wanted to sink into their strength and let them surround her. She wanted to feel Adam’s hands in her hair, hear his voice promising her that he would take care of everything. She wanted Jake to kiss her. When Jake dominated her mouth, she didn’t think about anything but them.

But she couldn’t do it. Even if they would let her, she wasn’t sure it wouldn’t simply lead to more heartache.

Tears formed in Bridget’s eyes. “Why? Why is this happening? I don’t understand.”

At least she had Bridget. It was easy to hug her, to put her arms around her best friend and bring their heads close together. This woman was so dear to her. Bridget was brutally misunderstood because she didn’t quite know how to filter her words. But deep down, Bridget was loyal to the core. She knew how to be a friend. She knew how to love. If everything fell down around her, Serena was one hundred percent sure that Bridget would still be beside her. “I’m going to be okay.”

Bridget sniffled. Not many people understood just how emotional she could be. “You have to be. I don’t know what I would do without you. I love you, Serena. I really do. I know they hurt you, but you have to listen to them. You can’t take chances. You’re too important. To me. To Chris. And no matter what this asshole is saying, you have a ton of readers who think you’re important, too. Remember the signing we did where that woman thanked you because she read your books while she was going through chemo? You were important to her. He’s just sick. You can’t listen to him.”

“I know,” she said, though the tears just wouldn’t come. She loved Bridget, too, but she felt horribly bottled up as though she simply couldn’t let go. The tears were right there, but she blinked them back. Maybe one day she would be able to cry again. But not today. Today she would be strong. She would hold it all in until Jake and Adam were gone, and then she could wail all she wanted.

But now she would be strong.

Bridget released her, wiping her eyes. “Sorry. I’m just worried.”

“I know. I would be worried about you, too, sweetie.” She crossed to the sink and ran some cold water. “Can we just hide here for a while?”

Bridget chuckled. “Well, I’m sure they’ll come charging in when we’ve taken too long. I’ll be right back.”

Bridget disappeared into the larger of the two stalls. Serena stared at herself in the mirror. She looked tired and hollow. Just last night she’d sipped wine while Adam had brushed her hair. She’d felt like a princess. Was she being dumb? Should she just go out there and ask them if they could start all over again? Maybe it wouldn’t work, but maybe it would.

“Dumbass,” she said under her breath to the girl in the mirror. Not three hours after they’d ripped her heart out, she was looking for a reason to throw herself right back in the deep end of the pool.