In the Air Tonight (3 page)

Or maybe she was just light-headed from the change in altitude.

Fingers tapped the wheel as the truck in front of her car lumbered slowly along. She peered at the sky and then turned off the radio, tired of hearing how the early-for-the-season snowstorm would be the worst of the century.

She hadn’t called ahead—Mace, Gray’s best friend, wouldn’t know she was coming. Better that way. She’d always believed that the element of surprise was most effective—based on her own experience and hatred of surprises, she could say that with firsthand certainty.

But if she ever wanted to find out what happened to her stepbrother, she’d have to speak to his teammate.

The Army wouldn’t tell her anything. She’d waited for his friends to show up at the memorial service, but none of them had. It would be up to her to find them, and this seemed the perfect time.

Everything happens for a reason
, her mother used
to say, and Paige wondered what this reasoning was, why Gray had been taken from her … why her face was plastered on the news again.

Gray had always told her to go to Mace if anything ever happened and he wasn’t around.
Mace will take care of you
.

She’d met Mace once, when she lived in Chicago. Gray and Mace had stayed at her apartment overnight—they’d been on leave and traveling to California for vacation. Could still hear Gray introducing him.

Hey, Sis, this is Mace. He’s motorpool, like me
.

Translation—he’s Delta
.

She’d been on her way out to work the night shift, but Mace’s eyes had haunted her the entire time. He was broad and handsome and seemed to take up the entire apartment.

She’d hated him on sight. Maybe because he was so good-looking. Cocky. An asshole. And she’d labeled him all of that before he’d even opened his mouth.

When he had spoken to her, it was all one-word answers.

She’d been grateful that spending time with him hadn’t been an option. But the next morning the men were there later than she’d realized. She’d come in from work after having breakfast out with some of the other nurses on the night shift and dropped her stuff by the door. A pocketknife sat on the table next to the keys and jackets and she picked it up, assuming it was Gray’s.

It hadn’t been. The images of fear came spiraling through the metal before she could stop them. She’d wanted to throw the knife down, but couldn’t. She
saw a young boy. Saw fear and pain—and the word
trust
and then
escape
, over and over again.

The man this knife belonged to had been through hell as a child. But even though she understood tough childhoods, she didn’t need to take on any more than what she had.

But that wasn’t the end of their encounter.

She’d walked in on Mace sleeping naked in her bedroom—in her bed. She had given him and Gray her room, despite their protests that they’d be fine on the couch and the floor.

Gray had been in the shower.

She’d wanted to tear her gaze away from Mace, but hadn’t been able to for a good long while. Although she was used to seeing the human body on a regular basis, she remembered thinking she’d never seen anything so exquisitely male.

In the four years since she’d seen him, she’d been with a handful of men, none of whom really mattered. No, she’d never been able to shake the vision of Mace from her mind and, to be fair, she hadn’t really tried.

M
en had acted stupid over women since the beginning of time and tonight proved no exception. It wasn’t even midnight and Mace Stevens had already broken up three near misses and one full-blown fight. Caleb had nearly been the recipient of a chair to the head while trying to tend bar on one of the busiest nights of the year, the Friday after Thanksgiving.

His grandfather used to say,
When the weather gets bad around here, there isn’t much else to do but drink and make babies
. Mace hoped the baby-making portion of the evening was going to start soon, didn’t care if it started happening right on top of the bar, because at least everyone would be too distracted to throw down.

“Lighten up, man.” Caleb shoved a beer at him. “It’s almost over.”

“No it’s not. Not by a long shot.” He shook his head and then took a long pull from the bottle.

“Cut the gloom-and-doom shit, all right? Go get laid or something.”

In Caleb’s mind these days, getting laid was never a bad thing—and once upon a time it hadn’t been for Mace either. Sex used to be a distraction. But that was before they’d been captured and tortured, before they’d come home on extended leave from the Army.

Before Gray was killed.

Tonight, like all the others since then, there were no distractions to be had. The storm bearing down on this region had even the most weather-resistant people resigned to waiting this one out.

Plows would run as they could, but since the next day was the Saturday of a holiday weekend, no one cared much about the possibility of being snowed in. Now that the auto plant two towns over had closed, most of the locals were struggling. Friday night in the bar was a time for them to forget their troubles.

But Mace’s were just beginning. He’d had the feeling in his gut all day, couldn’t shake it, had snapped at Caleb for no reason and now Keagen, the other bartender, was also giving him a wide berth.

Cael, not so much. He was used to Mace’s moods—even with Caleb’s memory loss, he seemed to understand instinctively that his friend was, and always had been, a moody bastard.

And then the door opened and his world tilted a one-eighty for the second time in three months.

The woman framed there looked like an angel. Light from the parking lot shone in from behind her, illuminating
her like some kind of protective aura and he most definitely wasn’t the only man who noticed her.

But he was the only one who knew exactly who she was.

Paige Grayson. The woman he’d promised Gray he’d take care of if she ever needed anything.

My little sister
, Gray would call her when they first became friends, but even from the pictures Mace had seen before he’d met her, Paige hadn’t looked like a little sister. She was gorgeous, the stuff of fantasies.

Seeing her in person that first time four years ago had only made him realize that the recent pictures Gray had taken of her hadn’t done her justice at all.

He didn’t have to wonder what she’d thought of him the one and only time they’d met in person. Most people thought he was a suspicious asshole, and they were right. Paige had picked up on it immediately—and he’d had such a strong attraction to her that he’d hidden behind the great wall of defenses he had built so well.

The morning he’d left, he’d known she’d walked into the bedroom where he’d been sleeping naked, had closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep, only because nothing was going to happen with Gray in close proximity. He’d waited patiently while she watched him, her gaze like hot fire on his bare skin. He’d already been hard just thinking about her, being in her apartment, smelling her on the sheets and towels, but the appraising look he could see through his lashes had made it worse.

When she’d left, he’d jerked off, imagining what it would be like to do that with her next to him, what it would be like to have her hand replace his. And
then he’d remembered she was Gray’s sister—off-limits—and he’d left her apartment that same morning with a simple
Thank you
.

And now she was standing in his bar.

There was an energy around her—it almost made her glow. Her eyes, big and brown, her blond hair pulled back. She looked young, younger than he knew she was. And way too freaking innocent to be hanging around here. Except that Mace knew she was tough as nails, at least from what Gray had told him. She’d worked inner-city ERs for years.

Jesus, she did it for him in every single way. He couldn’t help but stare at the way the soft, old denim hugged her curves in all the right places. Her sweater was thin—definitely not warm enough—and she held the fabric of the sleeves fisted in her palms.

He’d noted that the sleeves were worn and stretched, as though holding the sweater like that was a common occurrence. Gray had told him about Paige’s psychometry—
magic hands
, Gray used to call them.

She could read people’s thoughts if she touched them, although that last part was a secret she didn’t like anyone knowing.

Mace hated knowing everyone’s secrets as well. “Not the type of woman you could ever hold anything back from,” he’d noted at the time.

Gray had shot him a look. “She’s not the type of woman you’d want to. Not that you should get any ideas about my sister,
brother
.”

Mace had ideas—both then and now—definite, inappropriate ideas. Hundreds of miles, sometimes continents, had separated them then. Now, maybe twenty feet and counting.

“Who are you … ah.” Caleb had come up behind him. “Pretty. Not from around here.”

Yeah, Caleb had a one-track mind when it came to women these days. He also had traumatic amnesia that wiped out much of his memory, one he was currently trying to rebuild.

“Wait, that’s Gray’s stepsister.” Caleb often studied his past as one might a history textbook with the same fierce determination that brought him up the ranks and commanded Delta Force’s attention. “Something must be wrong.”

He moved to go to her, but Mace put a hand out. “Let me—she’ll have questions.”

Caleb glanced at him, and Mace saw the nerves take over the big man. He held it together well most days, but any mention of Gray—or their capture and Gray’s subsequent death—was enough to throw him off his game. “She’ll want to know what happened that night. I’m sure the Army’s not telling her shit.”

Mace nodded in agreement. “We’re not telling her anything.”

“But for Gray …”

“For Gray, we’ll make sure she’s all right. And then we’ll send her back home,” Mace said, and Cael pushed past him to get behind the bar.

The crowd was gearing up. Midnight. Witching hour coincided with Paige’s arrival.

There was no way that was simply a coincidence.

I
t only took a few steps before Paige found herself the object of unwanted attention, in the form of a tall man with a long beard and a big belly. He grabbed
her around the waist, pulling her close while managing to pinch her ass at the same time.

The recent attack she’d endured in the ER was too fresh in her mind—she was still reeling from it the way the bruising was still fresh on her skin, and so she jabbed her elbow back into his ribs while simultaneously jamming her heel into his foot.

He howled and let go, but she didn’t, brought him down hard by flexing his own hand inward toward his wrist. He was on his knees in front of her; and she kicked him in the balls for good measure.

And yes, of course that would cause all hell to break loose. What a great way to announce her arrival.

Within seconds, she was pushed and shoved along with a swaying crowd. No one seemed to know who they were fighting, but that didn’t appear to be the point of the riot.

She tried to see her way clear to the bar—or the door—but she was being carried along with the wave, and just trying to keep from getting hit by the flying fists was hard enough.

And then she lost her balance, found herself on her ass on the floor, about to be trampled.

Just as suddenly as she’d fallen, she was being hauled to her feet and then off them again, held closely against a hard, broad chest and carried. She held on for dear life until she was placed on a stool behind the bar.

She looked up to see who her savior was and her breath caught.

Mace
.

Mace is larger than life
, Gray once told her before she’d met the man in person, and now, with Mace
towering over her once again, she remembered how true that statement was. It wasn’t simply his size, although he had to be close to six-foot-four, but rather, he exuded a presence that would’ve made the most jaded woman stand up and take notice. He was a man who could calm chaos or incite a riot, depending on his mood.

Tonight, he appeared stoic. But like there was a small part of him that wouldn’t mind picking up a chair or two and brawling with the best of them.

“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice rough enough to make her tingle, and all she could do was nod.

His eyes—they were the color of ocean—could be warm and inviting and then cold and ever changing. A shock against his dark hair and olive skin.

He was as beautiful as she remembered, rugged—there was no other way to describe him. She was still pressed to his body … and she never wanted to let go. Until he demanded, “What the hell did you think you were doing back there?”

Protecting myself. Looking for you
. Finally, she found her voice. “Mace, I’m Paige, Gray’s sister,” was all she could say.

“I know who you are. Stay here,” he told her. He’d placed her behind the bar and she did remain there for a few minutes, watching him regain control of the bar. He grabbed a few men by the scruff of their shirts, another couple he caught by the upper arms. For the most part, his voice and the big man with the baseball bat seemed to soothe the masses. Within the space of ten minutes, the room had gone from a sprawling mass of people to nearly empty.

While Mace led another group out the door, telling them he would walk them safely to their cars, she noted the man lying on the ground, bleeding through his T-shirt.

She hopped off the stool, grabbed a few clean towels from the pile under the bar and a pair of gloves from the first-aid kit next to them and headed toward the injured man.

Kneeling beside him, she went to work, quickly assessing his injuries by pulling up his shirt and noting that he’d been stabbed. He was also unconscious, but she was pretty sure one didn’t have to do with the other.

His pulse was good—pupils were equal and reactive and so she concentrated on holding the towel to staunch the bleeding. She looked around then, because she didn’t hear any sounds of incoming sirens and realized Mace was standing over her, as if on guard.