His Captive Lover (The Thorpe Brothers Series) (6 page)

Ash finally turned to Mia, one dark eyebrow arrogantly raised as if to declare that it was finally her turn to explain the circumstances.  She sat up straighter in her chair, feeling nervous now that all of these confident and educated people were waiting for her to explain.  “I can only think that the arguments were when I demanded that Jeff stop stalking me.  I’d asked him repeatedly to leave me alone after our breakup but he was determined to try and convince me to give him another chance.”

“What was the breakup about?” Ash demanded, turning to lean against the conference room table, his huge arms crossed over his chest, straining the material over those bulging biceps. 

Mia shrugged.  “I guess we, or perhaps just me, felt that the relationship wasn’t going anywhere.”

Again, without a word, he tilted his head, urging her to continue. 

Mia sighed and slapped her thighs.  “Jeff just became too demanding.  He wanted…things, that I didn’t feel we were ready for.”

She felt as much as saw Ash’s body stiffen.  “You mean you…”

“Stop right there!” she snapped.  She was glaring right back at the man.  “My personal relationship with Jeff is not an issue here.”

Ash shook his head and walked over to her.  Without an explanation, he grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the conference room and into a smaller, empty conference room right across the hallway. 

As soon as the door was closed, he turned to face her, looking stern and commanding.  “Let’s get something straight right now, Mia.  Everything about your personal life is an issue now.  Every detail is going to be dragged through the mud and through court.  If this goes to trial, you can damn well expect that the prosecutor is going to ask it.  He or she is going to try and make you squirm and if that means dragging your sex life through the mud, then that’s going to happen.” 

He waited a moment to let that statement sink in before he continued.  “So what was it that Jeff was asking you to do in the bedroom that you refused to do?”

“Nothing!” she gasped back, her hand covering her neck in shock. 

Ash ran a hand through his hair.  “What?  Did he want you to dress up like a French maid and dust him off?”

“No!”

“Leather and chains?”

“No!”

“Whips?  Bondage?”

“Absolutely not!”

“What the hell was it?”

“Nothing!” she snapped, disgusted by the idea of even considering doing any of those things with Jeff. 

Ash rolled his eyes, his hands fisted on his hips and he glared down at her.  “Mia, what was it that you wouldn’t do in the bedroom with Jeff?  I can tell that this is the pink elephant in the room.”

“Nothing!” she yelled back at him, her hands pushing her hair out of her eyes.  “Nothing okay?  Nothing at all!  I wouldn’t sleep with him, I wouldn’t have sex with him, I wouldn’t do anything beyond kissing him and in the end, even that creeped me out.  Okay?  So nothing!  The problem is that I wouldn’t do anything with the jerk, okay?”

Ash looked down at her, trying to understand.  “Wouldn’t do what?” he asked again.  He had an inkling, but it was so impossible, he couldn’t conceive of it. 

Mia crossed her arms over her chest, trying to suppress the anger and embarrassment she was feeling as this tall, gorgeous and obviously very sexually active man continued to stare down at her like she was some sort of weirdo. 

“I wouldn’t have sex!” she said, it again.  “How else can I explain it?  I didn’t have sex with him!  I know, I’m ridiculous.  But I’m not a control freak.  I just…”  She shrugged, not sure how she could explain that she hadn’t ever wanted to have sex, not even with a man who she’d agreed to marry.

“Not ever?  Or just not with your ex?” he clarified.  He told himself that it probably wasn’t important for the case.  But something inside of him knew it was extremely important to him. 

Mia couldn’t look at him.  She turned slightly to the side and stared at the blank wall.  “Not ever.”

There was a long, painful silence while Mia waited for this terrifying man to start laughing at her.  Her whole body tensed for that to happen which is exactly what Jeff had done when she’d told him.  And once he’d stopped laughing, he wanted to know if she was mal-formed or if she was ashamed of her body. 

She hated this.  She wished she’d just gone ahead and had sex with one of her boyfriends in college.  There had been ample opportunity.  And it wasn’t like she was opposed to sex.  She just wanted it to mean something.  She wanted to be swept away by the passion and desperate for the man to touch her.  She didn’t want it to be a strained, awkward activity.  And she definitely didn’t want to have sex with a man simply to prove to him that she was attracted to him, which was why she eventually broke things off with Jeff.  He told her she had to have sex with him to prove that she loved him or he was walking away.  So she let him walk. 

But Ash didn’t say a word.  They stood facing each other, Mia looking straight at his chest while she waited tensely for his amusement and ridicule.  “Okay then.  Let’s get back to the meeting,” he said and walked back through the door, holding it open for her. 

Mia couldn’t believe it.  Wasn’t he going to laugh?  Wasn’t he going to question her further?  Demand details?  Tell her she was a freak? 

She wasn’t going to press it.  She walked through the doorway and back into the conference room where the conversations automatically stopped.  Everyone turned back to Ash, waiting for his next line of questioning. 

Mia wanted to kiss him when he simply moved on to the next problem.  He didn’t bring up anything she’d just said or offer any sort of explanation.  “Okay, Mark, you’re in charge of the baseball trophy.  I’ll interview Mia’s co-workers to see what they can give us.  Ann,” he called out to another investigator, “Go to the high school where Jeff worked and find out details of his work life.”  He looked around the room.  “What else do we have?” he asked. 

People started calling out various ideas and Ash nodded his head in approval or shifted their focus slightly.  Mia listened, more in awe of his processes than she had been earlier in the day when he’d gotten her out of jail without any bail.  The man was a powerhouse and she was pretty impressed.  He commanded the room with fairness but complete authority.  She could see that everyone who was working this case was impressed with how he worked.  All were eager to shift their direction when he suggested a new course and proud when he approved of where they were already going. 

They’d been brainstorming for about two hours and the afternoon was starting to shift towards evening when two other men came in and sat down towards the back of the room.  A third man came in a few minutes later and she wiggled uncomfortably as they surveyed her while Ash and his team continued to throw out ideas.  She answered everyone’s questions, not really sure why they might be asking some of them, but she gave as much information as she could. 

About an hour later, Mia was dragging even though everyone else in the room was still going strong.  “That should be it,” he called out to everyone. 

People unhurriedly stood up, stretching after such a long meeting as they gathered up their things and slowly shuffled out the door.  The three men towards the back remained and, when everyone else was gone, they stood up and moved towards Ash.  The closer they came, the more nervous she became.  And she could also see the resemblance between the four men, which meant they were the other Thorpe brothers.  Their reputations were fearsome and she could feel herself moving slightly closer to Ash, although she wasn’t completely conscious of what she was doing.  She only knew that she felt safer now that she was a few inches closer to his enormous body. 

“What are the odds?” one of them asked as they came closer.

Ash shifted, subtly letting his brothers know that she was his.  Staking his claim seemed like such a primitive action, but he felt primitive right now and he wasn’t going to apologize for it.  Nor was he going to delve into the reasons for that feeling right at the moment.  She’d moved away from him before the meeting but she was shifting towards him now.  And that was all the subtle signs he needed to go caveman with his brothers. 

He put a hand to the small of her back, his body reacting when she moved even closer to him, almost leaning against his side unconsciously.  “Mia, these ugly men are my brothers,” he explained.  “This is Ryker.  He’s the oldest and most boring,” he said, referring to the one that looked the most serious.  Mia shook his hand, but moved right back to Ash’s side.  “And this is Xander, the next oldest and most cynical,” he waited while Mia shook Xander’s hand carefully, “and Axel, the most irritating.” 

Mia shook each man’s hand, hoping her smile appeared more sincere than it felt.  It occurred to her that she didn’t have the same reaction to their touch as she did when Ash touched her.  When that happened, it felt like a lightning bolt shot through her body.  She was left confused and disoriented not to mention her mind going in strange, embarrassing directions.  All three men were staring at her as if trying to dissect her and she wanted to punch Ash’s arm for being so rude.  She felt he should say something like, “She’s innocent.”  Or maybe “We’re going to get the charges dropped soon.”  Instead, he just stood there discussing the case while silently telling his brothers some weird male message that she couldn’t decipher. 

“Sounds like a good strategy,” Ryker said.  “But you know she can’t go home.”

Mia looked from one to the other and they were all nodding. 

Ash looked down at her to explain.  “Your house and yard have been locked off as a potential crime scene.  They claim they haven’t finished looking for your ex’s body yet so they won’t allow you back in.”

Her eyes widened.  “They’ve been at it all day.  What have they found that could possibly lead them to assume he still might be hidden in there somewhere?  It’s a pretty small house too.  Only two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen, and a family room.  I don’t even have a formal dining room!”

“It’s an old house, from what I understand.  You have a basement.”

Mia waited, wondering where he was going with that.  “And?” she prompted when he didn’t continue.

“And there’s fresh cement apparently.”

She thought carefully, trying to remember what was in the basement.  He was right, it was an old house but the basement had been stone before.  The previous owners had cemented over the basement because of leaks during the spring rainy season.  “But I didn’t put the cement down,” she exclaimed when she realized what they were thinking.  “It was there before I moved in.  I don’t even know if it was the previous owners or the ones before that.”

Ash leaned against the table again.  “It doesn’t matter.  They can’t tell the age of the cement.  So they’re trying to determine if anything is buried underneath.”

She almost fell into the chair behind her.  “So they have a jackhammer in my basement destroying the foundation.  Great.”  She wasn’t sure what she was going to do now.  It sounded like her whole house was being completely destroyed brick by stone.  “Okay, so I’ll…” she thought quickly, trying to figure out what she was going to do.  “I’ll just stay in a hotel until this blows over.  It won’t be long, right?” she looked up at Ash, fighting tears and begging him to tell her that he would overcome this situation quickly.  She didn’t even care if it was a lie at this point.  She just needed to hear him say it.  If he said it, she could believe it.  The man was too big and too strong for anyone to contradict him, right? 

Ash saw the tears she was valiantly fighting and his gut twisted.  “Yes.  We’ll get this all resolved quickly.  But I doubt you can afford a hotel.  So you’ll stay with me.”

Four sets of surprised eyes looked at Ash.  He shifted uncomfortably, but he wasn’t backing down.  “She can stay in the spare bedroom.  There’s plenty of room.”  He said this as if it was the most obvious and common sense approach, but Mia was already shaking her head. 

“I can watch out for myself,” she said.  “There’s a hotel down the street from me.”

Ash turned to face her, effectively blocking out his brothers.  “Mia, two streets in any direction in your neighborhood and you’re driving into gang violence or a highway.  The hotels in your area might not be expensive, but they’re probably filled with crawling characters you don’t want to run into.  And I’m not just talking about the eight legged kind either.”  He let that sink in a moment before he continued.  “You can’t stay in your house and you’re not staying in a hotel that you can’t afford or you might not come out of alive.”

She still shook her head, refusing to budge on this issue.  “I’m not staying with you.”

“She can stay with me,” Ryker offered. 

Both Axel and Xander actually took a step backwards with that offer.  But Ryker continued to stare back at his youngest brother, the offer still out there and amusement in his darker blue eyes. 

“No way in hell,” Ash growled, his hands fisting by his sides as he struggled to keep himself from punching his oldest brother.  Ryker might be the serious and conservative member of the family, but that didn’t stop him from enjoying the ladies.  In fact, they swarmed to him, all of them eager to spend his money and ease his frustrations. 

Someone cleared his throat with the rising tension.  “I’m sure Autumn would let her stay with her,” Axel piped up.

Ash turned to glare at his brothers, irritated that they were even butting in.  Unfortunately, Autumn probably would be more than happy to offer her best friend a place to stay.  It infuriated Ash that he couldn’t easily refute that option.

“Autumn has book club tonight,” Xander offered.

The three brothers all turned their attention to Xander, all of them wondering how the man knew Autumn’s evening schedule so well but none were willing to ask the question.  Each of them shook their heads and suppressed their curiosity.  “She’s staying with me,” Ash countered.  “Come on,” he told her, grabbing her hand before anyone else could offer a solution that would actually work.  He had no idea why it was so important to make sure that Mia was under his roof tonight.  He just knew that it was and he was going to get out of here before anything changed.