Lan looked out over the ballroom and tried to imagine himself belonging here. It was an impossible task.
Alea held out her hand, greeting some big wig. Schmoozing was probably politically important, but all he gave a shit about was that her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. He hated to see her so withdrawn. When she didn’t realize he was watching her, she gave in to pure joy. Then her dark eyes glittered and her pillowy lips curved into a smile that could light up the whole fucking world.
But now she was faking it, flashing that annoyingly bland smile to the crowd, which she often did to people who didn’t matter. When she didn’t want anyone to look at her too closely. He didn’t even mind the little fit she’d thrown earlier because at least when she was pissed off at him, she was being honest. He would take her anger over nonchalance any day of the week.
But she was right about one thing: he was a dumbshit who didn’t deserve her. He needed to remember that. He was here to do a job, which meant protecting her, period. No matter how much he wanted to take her in his arms and love her until she couldn’t think about anything else, she was a princess. He was pure Texas trailer trash. He was nowhere near Alea’s league.
“Does Rafe have the target?” Dane asked over the tiny device in his ear.
Lan quickly found the man they were talking about. Rafe took Piper’s hand, kissing it as he started to lead the shaykhah to the dance floor. The music had changed from a bouncy song to a long, slow grind. That was baby-making music, and Rafe grinned wolfishly at his wife.
Alea stopped and looked out to the floor, longing plain on her face. God, he wanted to walk over to her, thread his fingers through hers, lead her out there. But he also wanted his two best friends to be there touching her, too. And that made him a fucking freak in most of the world. Bezakistan was different, so in Lan’s book, that’s what made the country great.
“He’s got her.” Piper was following Rafe onto the dance floor, her face shining up at him.
“Excellent. Keep an eye on our brat. I’ll let you know when we’re done. Out.” Coop’s voice cut off, and Lan knew he was out of the loop for a bit. He’d volunteered for this duty to remove himself from the meeting. He’d rather watch over Alea because he didn’t agree with this clandestine shit. Everyone was planning Alea’s life without including her. She should be in that fucking meeting, but he’d been outvoted.
Rafe and Piper started a slow dance. Kade walked up behind them, putting his hands on Piper’s waist and leaning over to kiss the back of her neck.
Those two had backup. Even if anything ever happened to Rafe or Kade, Piper al Mussad would never be alone. If one of them went down, she would have two more husbands to lean on. They would protect the woman they loved. He’d heard sad stories about some of the widows of guys he’d served with in the Army. Once their husbands were dead, they were often utterly alone. So many became single moms, struggling to make ends meet because they didn’t have anyone else in their corner.
“Nix, how you doing?” A deep voice asked behind him.
He turned and saw one of the Lennox brothers holding out his hand. Lan took it and tried to give him a smile. The other man tried to return the gesture, mostly baring his teeth in return.
Cole and Burke were near perfect twins, but Lan had quickly learned that Burke was the one who smiled. It wasn’t that Cole was always grim. He could light up when his wife walked in the room, but otherwise, he was a little standoffish. “Going good, Cole. Dane’s meeting with your guys right now.”
Lennox nodded. “Good. Dominic runs a tight ship. They’ll get you what you need. Sorry I couldn’t handle it personally, but this pregnancy has been giving Jessa hell for a couple of months.”
“She’s perfectly good now.” A gorgeous redhead threaded her arm through Cole’s and turned her face up to his. “I just needed to get through the vomiting-up-my-toenails phase.”
There was that smile of Cole’s. Lan watched, a knot of jealousy in the pit of his stomach. He hated this envy. He didn’t want Jessa or begrudge Cole his happiness. He just wanted a little of his own.
“Jessa!” Alea’s smile turned genuine as she approached the auburn beauty. What he wouldn’t give to have that smile directed at him...
“I heard you were here,” the princess said. “How is baby Caleb?”
Lan supposed it had been inevitable that Alea would become close to her saviors’ wife. Alea’s friendship with Jessa made her happy. As far as Lan was concerned, that pretty much was all he needed to know about the woman. If Alea loved her, then she had to be good people, as his granny would say.
He watched as Alea talked to her friend, her posture relaxed for once. Cole’s brother, Burke sauntered up, sliding his arm around Jessa’s waist as they chatted with Alea.
When everyone was occupied, Cole’s face turned serious. With an almost imperceptible cock of the head, he motioned Lan to follow him. They stepped out of the conversation, just far enough so they couldn’t be overheard.
“What’s going on between you and Alea?” Cole asked.
“I’m her bodyguard. That’s it.” And that was where it would stay because she had zero interest in him.
“Bullshit. Do you think I don’t have eyes? I saw the way you looked at her. Man, I’m not trying to mess with you. I like very few people. Alea is one of them. You’re one of them. That girl is still in trouble. Even if Dominic’s guys found out that Khalil was the one behind her kidnapping and she’s out of danger, she’s still in trouble.”
Because she hadn’t gotten over what had happened during her abduction. How was she supposed to get over that? She wouldn’t let them see her fear or pain, so how the fuck were they supposed to help her?
“I don’t think there’s a damn thing I can do. She doesn’t want me.”
“Is she into one of your crew?” Cole’s face creased as though he was thinking through a problem.
“No. She doesn’t like any of us.” Would it be better or worse if she wanted Dane or Coop? Maybe. At least someone would be happy.
“Again, I call bullshit. The minute we stepped over here, she started casting glances this way, and she’s not staring at me.”
Lan let his eyes slide toward her. Sure enough, Alea jerked her gaze back to Jessa Lennox as quickly as she could. In fact, a little crowd had formed around her now, as Jessa and Alea had been joined by a familiar, pretty blonde, Hannah James. Her husbands, the James brothers, ran Black Oak Oil and had long-standing ties with the Bezakistani royal family.
Husbands. It seemed like everyone was getting on the marital bandwagon lately. Everyone except the one woman who had grown up surrounded by plural marriage.
“You were with her those first few days after you rescued her, right?” Lan asked.
“I was.” Cole’s tone turned grim.
“How bad was she?” He’d read the medical reports, but they were clinical. Sure, he knew the date of her kidnapping, where she’d been held, when she’d been rescued. He knew she’d been tortured. But none of that really explained the ordeal that had shaped the woman he knew now.
“Unimaginable. Look, she should be the one to tell you, but I’m starting to worry that she’ll never confide in anyone. She looks healthy now. She’s a hundred and eighty degrees from the skinny, drug-addicted girl I carried out of that brothel. In fact, she looks great, until I see her eyes.”
“Drugs?” Nowhere in those fucking reports had anyone mentioned drugs. Alea would never have done that of her own free will. She was so proud and seemingly in control. So…fuck. Her captors had drugged her. Hell, just how much of her soul had they taken?
“Shit. I’d hoped Tal would have let you in on that since you’re her bodyguard.” Cole groaned a little. “I’m going to get my ass kicked, but Tal, Rafe, and Kade are treating her with kid gloves. She’s drifting. I know they think they’re sheltering her, but someone has to push that girl to open up. Look, I understand the impulse to stay out of things. I really do, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned about getting people to heal…sometimes you gotta give them a shove. You can’t just hope people will change all by themselves. If you care about Alea, you have to pry her open, man. She’s not made of glass. That woman fought like hell in that brothel. She fought to get off the drugs. Maybe she just needs a little help from someone to help her fight for her future.”
Wouldn’t he love to be that someone? “Man, she’d just fight me, too.”
Lan stared at her openly now, not even trying to disguise his longing. He didn’t give a shit what anyone else thought. He was in love with that woman. She would never love him back. They came from different worlds. She was a princess, and he had no idea who his father was.
But maybe sometimes love wasn’t about getting what he wanted. Maybe sacrifice was really at the heart of it. If he pushed her, fought for her, maybe she could tear down that tough-girl mask and find a way to be happy—even if it wasn’t with him, Dane, and Coop.
“I don’t think you’ll have to fight her too hard. Just push a little every day. Talk to her. Don’t let up and don’t let her force you to the side. I know how this goes. Jessa tried her hardest to shove us out of her life. She said some horrible things to me. It hurt, but then I realized she was both lashing out and testing us. Burke and I had hurt her when we’d left her alone. She had to push until she realized we weren’t going to disappear again, no matter what. Nothing she could say or do was going to throw us out of her life. Alea might have the same M.O.”
“We’ve never been with Alea.”
“We?”
Lan felt himself flush. Damn it. “We all have feelings for her, me, Dane, and Coop. We thought we could pursue her together, but she wasn’t interested in us, either together or apart.”
“Or she’s scared that none of you can accept what she’s been through.”
“She survived. That’s the only thing that matters. Why wouldn’t we accept that?”
“Survival is a funny thing, man, and you damn well know it. When you’re down in the trenches all that matters is living, but it’s not so simple once you return to the real world. People judge you. You measure what you did to live against conventional social mores…and suddenly what once seemed like a simple choice is murky and gray.”
He knew exactly what Cole was talking about.
“That’s when you have to deal with the reality that you lived and some didn’t,” Cole went on. “That’s when you have to accept who the fuck you really are.”
He hadn’t thought about it that way before. Alea was a survivor, but she had a heart. How guilty did she feel for getting out alive when others hadn’t? How ashamed was she by whatever she’d had to do in order to live? She’d been through a war of sorts, and he had no idea how much of herself she’d lost along the way.
The fact that Alea had survived and could function now proved how strong she was. She deserved better than to be treated like some fragile doll who couldn’t make a decision about her own life. Despite what all the other guys thought, she could handle the truth. Being in control of her future might even help her heal from the past.
Lan knew what he had to do. “Well, hell.”
“What?” Cole asked.
“I’m going to get my ass kicked. I hate getting my ass kicked.” He steeled himself. If he was going to start fighting for his princess, he might as well start now.
“No one ever tries to kick my ass anymore,” Cole grumbled.
Resolved, Lan stalked back to Alea, his heart chugging. Right here, right now, he was going to change everything. Yeah, he should probably wait. If he wanted to play on a team, he shouldn’t make decisions alone. But he wasn’t risking that Dane and Coop would hate the plan and try to shut him down. Alea deserved to know what was going on.
“Landon?” Alea’s eyes widened as he reached for her hand.
“Come with me, Princess. We’ve got a meeting to attend.”
She began to protest, her words saying one thing, while her fingers said another. Maybe he was going about this all wrong, but as he led her out of the ballroom, Lan could have sworn she squeezed his hand, holding on tight.
* * * *
Cooper held the door open for Sheikh Talib al Mussad and wondered if they were doing the right thing. Alea needed peace and to believe she was safe. He didn’t like the idea of worrying her just because they had a gut instinct that could be wrong. If his hunch was on the money, they’d handle it so she could be none the wiser. Right?
Tal strode into the room where Dane and the Anders brothers had already set up. There were seats with a folder in front of each.
The investigation into Alea’s abduction. God, he almost didn’t want to know what that file said. A part of him wanted to pretend that the past was behind them all, that she was healing even now, and merely playing coy and hard to get.
But he knew better. Alea had been ground under some fucker’s boot, and deep down Coop needed to know who he could blame so he’d have someone to kill. He’d finally found the girl who made his heart pound, and she was broken because of this asshole. Or maybe there was more than one asshole. Shooting multiple criminals wouldn’t bother him.
The tall dude at the front of the room slipped out of his blazer and took a seat at the head of the table. “If you will all take a seat, we can go over the findings fairly quickly and get the sheikh back to his ball. My name is Riley Anders, and I’m the research expert at Anthony Anders. This is my brother, Lawson. He’s pure muscle so don’t expect him to actually talk. He prefers to grunt.”
Law sat beside him, straddling the back of a chair, and flipped his brother the finger.
“So they’re civilized,” he muttered as he took a seat next to Dane.
Dane leaned over, talking behind his hand. “No doubt. But according to the Lennox brothers, these guys are the best.”
“I just wish we’d done the investigation ourselves.”
Dane shook his head. “We wanted the best. Alea deserves it. After they tell us the news, then we take over. We can either give her the good news that Khalil was the one who had her kidnapped or we quietly take down the motherfucker who did. That, my friend, is a job we will do ourselves and relish.”
Because they damn straight were the best at killing someone who needed to die.
“If you’ll open your folders, you’ll see that we’ve done a very thorough investigation of the princess’s abduction. Since we were not allowed to interview Princess Alea, it’s incomplete,” Riley pointed out with a tight smile.
Tal scowled. “I’ve explained this. You have everything you need in the reports.”
Law’s eyes narrowed. “Do we? Those reports seem a bit sanitized. There are no real details about what happened to her while she was held.”
“Bad shit,” Dane shot back. “What the fuck more do you need to know?”
Riley glared. “Shut the testosterone off and get real. We need to know everything. We’re not here to judge the princess. We’re here to figure out who plotted her kidnapping. Knowing what she endured during her captivity might provide clues.”
Tal leaned forward intently, his jaw tight. “Are you telling me you know this wasn’t random? Alea is a beautiful girl. Isn’t it possible that she was taken and held for the highest bidder? It makes sense that she’d be targeted because she hid her wealth. The person who nabbed her might have believed she wasn’t protected.”
Law’s head shook, shooting down Tal’s earnest hope. “Not a chance.”
“What my brother means to say is that we have proof to the contrary. Turn to page five of the file. It’s a photocopy of the note that brought Alea to the club that night. It was found amongst her things from New York,” Riley said quietly, the very somberness of his voice an answer to the question.
Meet me at 7 at the Jackson Club downtown. Please. I need help.
It was unsigned, but the stationary was unmistakable. It had come from the Bezakistani embassy in New York.
“We’ve seen and discussed this note.” Dane sighed. “You’re right. She must have believed she knew who wrote it. Whoever’s behind her abduction knew she would respond to a request from the embassy. It stands to reason this person knew exactly who she was and targeted her. Motherfucker.”
“The question is why,” Riley said, then turned to Tal. “You never received a ransom note?”
The sheikh shook his head. “No. I would have paid. I would have paid anything.”
“Then they weren’t after money,” Dane concluded.
Riley shrugged a little. “We can’t be completely sure of that, but there’s one other reason we’re convinced this wasn’t random. If we were just dealing with slavers filling an order, she would have been raped about ten minutes after her kidnapping. You’ve read the medical file. You know that didn’t happen.”
Dane’s whole body had stiffened. Coop wasn’t any happier. When they had first heard Alea’s story, he, Dane, and Lan had sat down and talked. Even if she hadn’t been raped, she’d been through a lot. They had backed off physically because of it. Coop had started reading about the psychology of victims, trying to understand.
Law frowned. “From what we’ve been able to tell, Alea was brutalized in every other way imaginable. They left her virginity intact for a reason.”
Tal slapped at the table. “Do we have to talk about this?”
“The information won’t leave this room,” Coop vowed. “But you asked us to be responsible for Alea’s well-being. It’s hard to do that if we don’t talk about information that might be relevant.”
“This is none of anyone’s business, even yours. I tasked you with making sure she doesn’t get hurt again. That’s all.” Tal glowered.
Ouch. That hurt like a bitch. But Coop refused to back down. “Knowing what she endured may tell us what happened to her and why, so yeah, I think it’s my business. I also happen to think that protecting her life is more important than protecting her modesty. She’s not just a job to me. She’s a good woman who deserves to close her eyes at night and sleep soundly, knowing that she’s safe.”
Tal drew in a calming breath. “Sorry. You’re right. I know how you all feel about her. I’ve seen how Alea reacts to you three. I asked you here for a reason, and it wasn’t as her security team.”
That was news to Coop. The last he’d heard, the sheikh had reminded all three of them of their completely non-royal status. Dane had gone the “I hate authority” route, while Lan had slid into his whole “woe is me/I grew up in a trailer so no woman can love me” pile of shit. Coop…he’d seen the play for what it was at the time.
Back then, Tal had been in a bad place with Piper. He’d been a bear growling at anything that even halfway moved. Dane wasn’t known for his subtlety. Lan sometimes stepped in it—when he bothered to speak at all. So they’d made nice, big targets for the sheikh. When Coop had written off Tal’s craptastic mood and snarling outburst to not getting any, Dane and Lan had called him an overly optimistic Pollyanna and told him to shut the fuck up.
Coop shrugged. He was realistic, thank you. The other two could be morose morons. But they were his family.
“What are you saying, Your Highness?” Dane asked, his jaw squaring in that comic book, all-American hero way of his.
Tal turned to Dane. Coop’s stomach rolled. Here it came, the big emotional “I’m sorry” scene that had been building for six months. Fuck. Coop hadn’t gone into the Navy so he could have the verbal equivalent of dude hugs. He’d rather cut through the crap and put it behind them. “Let me translate. Tal fucked up and he’s sorry. He’s cool if we go after Alea because he knows we’ll take care of her. Now can we move this along?”
Tal frowned Coop’s way. “That’s not exactly how I planned to say it, but yes. I had a very long apology planned, too.”
“Can’t we handle this like men?” Coop asked. “Just punch each other, then share a beer and we’re all cool.”
Dane’s lips curled up. “Sorry, Tal. Coop isn’t a big believer in the whole ‘emotional sharing’ thing. I think it’s because he grew up surrounded by cattle.”
Coop shrugged. Sometimes he missed his dad’s ranch. “I was raised by cowhands who were long on work and short on chatter. Sorry.”
A huge smile crossed the sheikh’s face. “Well, Cooper was succinct, but correct. Alea needs you. I’ve talked this over with my brothers, and we’ve agreed that we will approve the marriage if you can convince her to accept.”
“We will.” Coop smiled now. “But it’s not fair. You had it easier. You got to steal a bride.”
“We followed in the tradition of our ancestors. They would whisk a woman away to someplace quiet and fuck her until she finally agreed to marry them,” Tal said with a long sigh. “You’ll have to be sneaky. I doubt Alea will prove as accommodating or as easily deceived as Piper. Plus, we had the whole language thing on our side. Unfortunately for you, Alea is proficient in five languages. I don’t think she knows Swahili. Do any of you?”
Coop rolled his eyes. “I think we can all agree Alea is smarter than any of us. We’re going to have to rely on how hot we are.”
“That’s worked so well for us up to this point.” Dane rolled his eyes. “So please stop walking around in your boxers on the off chance that Alea will walk in, see your body, and fall at your feet.”
He elbowed Dane. It could have worked.
Law yawned, looking generally bored. “If you guys are done with the huggy portion of the evening, we could move on.”
Riley frowned at his brother. “Sorry, he’s the emotional equivalent of a lobotomized pit bull. Now for the bad news. There is no indication that Khalil had anything to do with the kidnapping. In fact, we talked to the private investigators he hired to look for the princess.”
“What?” Tal asked, nearly coming out of his seat.
Coop was confused, too. Khalil had been a violent asswipe bent on destroying the whole family. “He hated his cousins.”
“He hated everyone in line for the throne. Alea isn’t. And there’s no doubt he hired a small firm in California to search for her. It was actually a smart play. Those particular investigators have deep ties in South America.”
“It had to be a ruse,” Tal shot back.
“I don’t think so. Yes, he could have used it to point suspicion away from him if you’d thought he had something to do with the kidnapping. But it makes more sense to me that he would look for her so he could get his hands on her before you. That leverage might have been very interesting to a man like Khalil. Unfortunately for him, your investigators got there first,” Riley explained. “And the firm he hired doesn’t know anything we don’t.”
So if Khalil hadn’t been guilty, and the act hadn’t been random, where did that leave them? Screwed. Everything inside Coop tightened. Knowing that the asshole behind Alea’s torment was still free to plot against her again would feed his nightmares. Random, they could deal with. It sucked, but the Lennox brothers had taken vengeance out on the men who had actually grabbed Alea from her university. He, Dane, and Lan found comfort in that. Even Khalil as the mastermind made him feel better. That fucker was dead, and Coop knew that he and his buddies would watch over her and make sure nothing ever happened to her again.
But neither of the above wasn’t what he wanted to hear.
“So you believe that Khalil was in the dark, too.” Tal’s fingers splayed across the table as he leaned forward and cursed in Arabic.
Riley continued. “We’ve made a careful study of the flow of money of the abductors and the brothel where your cousin was held. It’s all a bit of a nightmare. The brothel was owned by a man who had close ties to the Delgado Cartel. The money filtered through there, but when the Lennox brothers took down that cartel and killed the Delgados, it splintered into three different groups. Getting any kind of financials on a criminal organization is difficult. Scraping figures together on one in disarray is nearly impossible.”
“So you’re saying you’ve reached a dead end?” Coop was already planning a trip to Colombia in his head. He would cut through all that red tape and just kill a bunch of fuckers until one told him what he needed to know.
“No. I’m saying I’m a genius and the world should really bow at my feet,” Riley quipped with an arrogant smile.
Law made a vomiting sound. “He likes to build it all up so he looks good. All he did was play around with his computer.”
“Luddite. I can cause more trouble with a few keystrokes than you can with all the guns in your arsenal. Now, I don’t have it all figured out, but I do have a very interesting pattern of deposits and withdrawals. If you look on page sixteen, I’ve documented what I’ve got.” Pages shuffled, and Riley went on. “I’ve managed to discern that the brothel’s business transactions were handled by the owner’s wife. It’s all routine and in cash until two weeks after Alea’s kidnapping. A wire transfer of twenty-five thousand hit a bank account the cartel used strictly for the brothels. Now, we all know they were selling women, but the same account then wires five thousand every ten days until two days before Alea was rescued.”
Dane shook his head. “Like…someone was paying for her upkeep?”
“If that’s the case, they definitely overpaid. According to Cole, she was kept in horrible conditions,” Tal muttered.
“I think someone was paying them simply to keep her alive, Tal,” Coop said darkly.
This twisted plot was far worse than he’d imagined. Someone out there had paid to keep Alea tied up and drug addicted. Someone had wanted her held captive. But why?
“Where did that money come from?” he demanded of Riley.
The PI paused. “Directly from a Cayman account, which was closed shortly after Alea was rescued. I’m still looking for the records that indicate where and how the account was funded, but as you can imagine, the banking laws in the Caymans are beyond liberal.”
“So what you’re saying is that we might never know.” Dane scrubbed a hand over his hair. He’d let it grow after he’d left the Navy. Coop kept his in a military cut because it was easy, but that hair of Dane’s seemed one way he distanced himself from his past.
Riley squared his big shoulders like he was ready for battle. Though he came across a bit like a geek, he was obviously in good shape and possessed a little badass. “I will figure it out. I won’t stop.”
“He’s serious,” Law explained. “He’s pissed off now. He’ll never quit. It’s why Dominic sent us out here. We’re going to go through some of the palace records. Some of them are kept on paper.”
Riley shuddered. “That’s barbaric, but I have to examine those records.”
“Are you suggesting someone at the palace was behind the atrocity?” Tal asked, clearly horrified by the prospect.
“We have to rule out every possibility,” Riley said without a hint of apology in his voice. “I’ve already checked on everyone Princess Alea knew in New York, including all the employees at the embassy. I suspect that whoever is behind her abduction is someone she knows.”
“Will they try again?” a soft, shaky voice asked from the shadowed doorway.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Alea walked into the light and stood like a gorgeous statue in her gown, her hair caught in a soft chignon that Coop wanted to run his hands through until all that midnight softness flowed around her shoulders. Her face was a tense mask. She had obviously heard far more than they wanted her to.
Dane touched the comm device that rested in his ear. “Lan, you’re missing your charge, buddy.”
“No, I’m not.” Lan stepped up behind her. His face was closed off as though he was just waiting for Dane’s brutal judgment to fall down on his head. “It’s her life. She has the right to know.”
Coop winced. Hell, there was going to be a throw down now. He would be lucky if he managed to keep the ballsy Texan from losing his life, much less his job.
Alea walked into the room, her head held high. “I caught wind of this little meeting and I threatened Landon. He didn’t have a choice.”
Dane’s face had turned a spectacular shade of red. “What exactly did you threaten him with, Princess? Were you going to use your nail file on him? Maybe you were going to throw one of your high heels at him.”
“Don’t be condescending. I threatened to tell my cousins that he’d made a pass at me and have him fired if he didn’t cooperate.” Alea stood her ground even as Dane rose and stalked toward her.
Coop stood, too, because this could get out of hand very quickly. “Now, Dane. Hold up. We should listen.”
Dane towered over her. Her crazy-hot, four-inch heels were no match for his six and a half feet of pure muscle. Alea tilted her head back to look him in the eyes. “I didn’t give him a choice, so if you have a problem with me being here, you really should talk to me.”
Lan shook his head, and Coop knew he was about to do something stupid. “She didn’t threaten me. Besides, everyone knows I hit on her all the time. I haven’t gotten fired yet.”
“That’s not going to be a problem anymore, Nix. Consider yourself officially fired. You can pack your bags and be out of here by morning.” Dane turned to the rest of the room. “Gentlemen, I think we have everything we need. I’m sure the sheikh will cooperate fully with the investigation.”
Tal was sitting back in his chair, watching the drama unfold with curious eyes. “Naturally, I will help in any way I can.”
Alea wasn’t through with Dane. She stomped one of those designer shoes as she followed him. “You can’t fire Landon. I won’t allow it. Tal, tell him.”
The sheikh shrugged negligently. “Dane is in charge of security. He can hire and fire as he likes. But he might want to remember that there are more important things at stake than whether Landon followed orders.”
Dane turned and glared at Lan, seemingly trying to intimidate the younger man and waiting for him to break, to ask for forgiveness.
And Alea was now looking through one of the folders, her skin turning pale as she caught sight of the pictures taken of her in the hospital after her rescue. That frail, gaunt creature looked nothing like the stunning beauty standing before him now. Her hand shook as she touched the picture.
Lawson Anders stood up, shoving some file folders into his briefcase. “To answer your question, Princess, yes. My gut tells me that whoever is responsible will come after you again. They had a bleak future all planned for you, and it didn’t involve you being rescued and coming home. I don’t know why you weren’t killed, but if someone wants to wipe you off the face of the Earth, I suspect they won’t hesitate to snuff you out next time.”
Alea’s eyes fluttered, and her shoulders dropped. “And you believe this is someone I know, someone I spend time with?”
There was no hint of emotion in Lawson’s eyes. “Yes. No idea who yet, but we’ll find out.”
Tal cursed and glared at Law. “Did you have to be quite so blunt?” Without waiting for an answer, he turned to Alea. “Are you all right?”
She nodded, looking drawn and still.
Straightening his tuxedo jacket, the sheikh cleared his throat, hiding a whole lot of pissed off. “Then I’m retiring back to the ballroom. I probably only have a few more hours of peace left. Once Piper finds out about this meeting, there will very likely be hell to pay. The good news is, she’s adorable when she’s mad. We’ll leave the cleanup to you three. After all, you wanted to be responsible for her. Be careful what you wish for.”
After Tal had gone, Alea swayed on her feet. Cooper moved across the room in a flash as her eyes closed and her body crumpled. He caught her just before she hit the floor and lifted her weight into his arms as if she was a precious burden. Dane and Lan stood right beside him, wearing matching expressions of concern.
This wasn’t how he’d pictured holding her for the first time. But no matter. He held her close now, even as her eyes fluttered open.
“Lea, you’re going to be okay.” Damn, was that his voice shaking?
“I think I’d like to go to my room, Cooper. Could you please take me?” She wasn’t fighting him. He’d expected her to struggle and tell him she could walk, but she let her arm drift up around his shoulders and she laid her head on his chest. She could probably hear his heart pounding.
“Absolutely.” He glanced back at his friends. “Someone get my med kit.”
Without waiting for Dane and Lan to answer, he started out the door. If someone was still after Alea, it was time to start putting her first.