MasterofVelvet (21 page)

“I’m okay.” Her smile was weary, though—she was still badly
shaken up. “Thanks to you and Adam.”

“Hey, no thanks ever necessary. Looking after you is what we
do. How’s he doing?”

The sadness in her eyes tugged at his heart. He loved her
dearly as his best friend’s soul mate, and to see her like this—after all she’d
been through, all her bravery through an ordeal that would test anyone to the
extreme—left a solid lump in his throat.

It also made him wonder what it would be like to have
someone care so very much about him.

Her lower lip trembled a little before she spoke. “They’ve
been really good about letting me stay with him for awhile. He hasn’t regained
consciousness yet. They said the surgery went as well as can be expected so now
it’s just a matter of waiting.”

Dan looked at the unconscious man, the wires, the tubes, the
beeping monitors and the drips. They’d intimated that it could have been worse
and as a former medic, he knew that there could have been major organ damage.
As it was—well, Adam had been bloody lucky even if it didn’t look that way
right now. “Beth—he needs you now more than ever. You have no idea how good
you’ve been for him.”

Holding Adam’s hand in both of hers, Beth looked up at him,
clearly puzzled by the gravity of his demeanor. “What do you mean? The
nightmares?”

“The nightmares he hasn’t had since you’ve been more than
just his assistant. Until you he hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in over ten
years.”

“Ten years?” Now she was even more confused, if that were
possible. “But the IED was fifteen years ago. What happened ten years ago?”

“You mean he hasn’t told you yet? Shit.” He frowned. “Beth,
I really don’t think you should hear about it from me.”

At that moment, the conversation was interrupted by the
arrival of a nurse. The doctor was on his way, so would they mind leaving for a
few minutes?

“Certainly. Mr. Chesterfield was just going to take me for a
cup of coffee, weren’t you?” Beth dropped the hint with all the subtlety of the
Royal Tank Regiment on maneuvers.

The best thing that could be said about the coffee was that
it was hot and wet, she thought ruefully as she faced Dan over a table in a
quiet corner of the hospital coffee shop. “Right. You’d better start talking.”

“And to think I kept telling Adam about your submissive
tendencies.” He pulled a face after his first sip of coffee. “Are you sure this
stuff’s fit for human consumption?”

“Stop trying to avoid the issue. What happened?”

Dan’s blue eyes began to look into the past. “You aren’t
going to take no for an answer, are you?”

“No, I’m not. And don’t think,” she continued, her voice low
but no less determined, “that using your Dom voice will work because I’ll tell
you now it won’t. I want answers.”

“Bloody subs. You don’t let a Dom get away with anything.”
He sighed. “We left the service a couple of years after Adam was injured in the
IED incident and like a lot of people in that position we went into private
security.”

“Hence GC Security?”

Dan nodded. “Some of the lads who left around the same time
joined us and then we went back.”

“Back? To the Middle East? But why?”

“Initially it was a means to an end. There was a lot of
money to be made. We figured we’d do it for a couple of years then come back to
the UK and start our real lives.”

“What did you do there?” Beth wasn’t sure whether she was
more afraid of asking the question or hearing the answer.

“Security at high-profile installations, personal
protection, that sort of thing. There were—are—a lot of very wealthy, powerful
people over there who like to feel secure as they go about their daily lives.”

Dan’s eyes became a little bleaker. “After the IED incident,
Adam changed. It was as if his life didn’t mean that much anymore. Oh, he never
endangered anyone—in fact, he became more protective of everyone around him but
less protective of himself and that didn’t change when we started the security
business. He took on the riskier jobs.

“This particular assignment was as escort to a foreign
diplomat’s son. Several threats had been made against the family before we even
got there, so that’s why Adam took that duty. Usually there’d be one of the
other lads with him but that particular day, we were short-handed so he was on
his own.”

Dan emerged from his plunge into the past. “Look, Beth, what
happened to Adam isn’t good to remember and it’s even less pleasant to hear.
You should really let him tell you about it.”

“So he can gloss over it and miss out the details? You know
he won’t tell me everything. I need to know what’s made him the man he is. I
need to know why he asked me to…”

She looked straight at him. “Tell me everything, Dan.”

Dan drained his coffee, grimacing at the taste. “Beth, yours
is a thousand times better than that stuff.”

He contemplated the cup for a moment, choosing his next
words. “Adam and the boy were kidnapped by insurgents. For the first week, ten
days, we had no idea where they were being held. The boy’s father insisted on
paying the ransom they were demanding—it was just petty cash to him—but the
kidnappers didn’t leave the boy and Adam where they said we could find them.

“Eventually, a few days later, we got some intel that led us
to an abandoned house. When we got them out the boy was pretty much fine
physically but Adam was more dead than alive.”

Beth looked at Adam’s friend, her eyes as stricken as his.
“What happened?”

“They hated the boy’s father. They wanted to get at him
through his son but the boy was their bargaining chip—no sense in torturing him
to the point where he couldn’t plead with his father to comply with the ransom
instructions. So instead, to make the boy’s pleas more desperate, they tortured
him psychologically by physically torturing Adam in front of him, with the
implication that they’d do the same to him.

“You see, during the time Adam had been the boy’s personal
protection they’d built up a really good relationship—I think the boy almost
saw Adam as a surrogate father figure.

“God knows what goes on in the minds of bastards like that.
Adam’s back was raw when we got him out. He’d been severely beaten, there were
burns all over his body and they’d broken half of his fingers. He was severely
dehydrated and starving—what little food and water he’d been given, he gave all
the food and most of the water to the boy. There were other injuries, too.”

“What other injuries?” Her face drained of all color. “Oh
God, no. They didn’t…?”

Dan bit back a curse. He’d already said too much. There was
no way he was going into those details. Yet even as he resolved to keep his
friend’s secret he could see his friend’s lover putting two and two together. How
could he tell her that if it had gone on for much longer Adam would most likely
have been as good as emasculated?

It seemed that his silence communicated the truth.

“God, I’m sorry, angel, I shouldn’t have told you.”

She was crying silently, great tears of sorrow and grief
rolling down her face. She would have had no idea what Adam had been through,
why he’d had such disturbing nightmares for so long. And now he’d been shot
right in front of her.

“I wish I could have been there for him then.”

Now Dan understood why Adam loved this woman so much and why
it was getting more and more difficult to continue to convince himself that he
was a confirmed bachelor. “You’re here for him now. He’ll be all right, Beth—keep
the faith. He’s tough. He wouldn’t let us carry him out of there. His body and
mind had been subjected to the worst hell you can imagine and then some but he
was determined to walk to the helicopter with as little assistance as possible.
He survived everything they threw at him back then.” And the weeks in the hospital
while his damaged body recovered.

He watched the bewildered shake of her head, knowing that
the small gesture was the tip of the emotional iceberg she was struggling with,
saw the way her expression changed in the fight to find something to say. But
Dan knew there were no words—not for a woman who loved a man the way Beth loved
Adam. The pain Dan had seen his friend suffer was right there in his woman’s
gaze.

Dan reached across to cover her hand with his, telling her
silently that words were not necessary because they both understood—they
understood everything. She nodded in acknowledgement but the revelation had
left an older shadow in her beautiful eyes.

“After all that I can understand him wanting to move into
something completely different but how did he end up in this business? It’s
light years away from security.”

Dan took a deep breath. That was a tale and a half and all
this time later they’d still not got to the bottom of it. Again, it wasn’t
Dan’s story to tell but he didn’t see any harm in sharing it with Beth. She
needed to hear something better to take away some of the distress caused by
what he’d just imparted.

“About a month after he left GC Security, some money appeared
in his bank account. It was a huge amount, Beth, seven figures and neither of
us could work out where it came from. He tried to get the bank to return it but
for reasons that to this day remain a mystery, it couldn’t be done.”

Dan toyed with his empty coffee cup. What he was about to
tell her still sounded totally unbelievable even after all this time.
Nevertheless, she was entitled to know—she was Adam’s woman.

So he told her about the letter inviting Adam to a meeting
at an exclusive hotel in London, the wealthy foreign national who’d asked him
to source a unique item of jewelry and provided him with the necessary
contacts. He’d been handsomely rewarded and more work of a similar nature had
followed from that source and other individuals of similar financial status.

“Now we’ve never been able to prove it but we suspect that
it’s linked to the foreign diplomat whose son Adam was escorting. An expression
of gratitude.

“He tried to send the money back time after time ever since
but in the end he had to accept that he would never be able to return it—so he
decided to donate it to an ex-servicemen’s charity instead.”

“The money didn’t come from that first client then?”

Dan shook his head. “The only thing that made the slightest
sense was that there was some sort of connection between the deposit and the
diplomat whose son Adam was escorting. That it was some sort of compensation
for what he’d suffered—because if he hadn’t been there they may well have
overcome their reluctance to hurt the boy—and that there was also a connection
between the diplomat and that first client. Further commissions followed,
requests for him to source jewelry, gemstones, fine art. The rest, as the
saying goes, is history.”

Dan checked his watch. “I have to go now. We’ve managed to keep
a lid on this so far but it’s going to take some heavy hitters to keep it that
way.”

“Where are you going?”

“Back to London. Adam and I have good friends in high places
as well as low—friends who owe us a lot and it’s time to call in the favors.
I’ve already spoken to them by phone to get buy-in from the local cops, so they
won’t bother you but I need to go and talk to them face-to-face. When I do, it
will ensure that there’ll be no comeback for all of this.

“Anything you need, if there’s anything I can do, call me,
no matter what time, day or night.”

Beth reached across the table to squeeze Dan’s hand. “Thank
you—for everything.”

“You’re most welcome, Beth.” He lifted her hand to press a
brief kiss to the back of it. “Take good care of yourself—and him. He’s a lucky
man. Now let me escort you back upstairs before I go.”

* * * * *

Having said goodbye to Dan, Beth returned to the ICU. She
was starting to feel a little lightheaded. Hopefully the doctor would be
finished with Adam now and she could go back to sitting with him.

She watched the doctor leave, then went back to the side of
the man she loved. He was still unconscious, although there seemed to be a
little more color in his face. She resumed her place at his side, taking hold
of the hand that lay so still on the sheets. She needed to talk to him—there
was so much she needed to tell him.

“Please, Sir. Come back to me. I need you so much. I need to
tell you how much I love you, how much you mean to me. Please, Adam.”

She also needed to tell him that she knew what had happened,
that she understood and it changed nothing.

And then there was the simple fact that she couldn’t forget
the horror of watching Adam fight to save both of them, how powerless she’d
been to help him, at the same time terrified of letting go of the switch that
stood between both of them and oblivion.

Most of all, though, what she couldn’t get out of her mind
was how Adam had repeatedly put himself between her and Underwood as the two
men struggled for control of the gun. Thanks to what Underwood had done to her
hands, she couldn’t even help by grabbing hold of the knife that Adam had
dropped at the start of the fight. She could only watch until that dreadful
moment when, with the gun between their two bodies, the trigger had been pulled
and with a final herculean effort Adam had dispatched their attacker by
breaking his neck.

Almost in slow motion she’d watched Adam collapse to his
knees and look toward her, before pitching forward, unconscious before he hit
the floor, blood blossoming over his side, too far away for her to get to him,
to be with him.

It was a nightmare that would live with her for the rest of
her life.

At such close quarters, the gunshot wound could have been a
hell of a lot worse—not the doctor’s exact words of course but that was the
message when they’d brought Adam back after surgery. He’d be unconscious for a
while yet to allow his body to start the healing process and it was still
impossible for them to say how long he’d have to remain in the hospital.