Spanked by an Angel [Notorious Nephilim 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (19 page)

Emmett pulled her into a tight embrace. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. Oh yes. Just tired, sore, and hungry.”

“Food coming up,” said Zach, picking up a phone on the wall.

For the next five days, Abigail didn’t mention leaving, and neither did Zach or Emmett. Every morning they joined her for breakfast, either in her room or one of theirs, and they spent each day showing her the grounds.

The old horse trails where she and Emmett had made love in the barn turned out to be the site of a second planned building in the nineteen fifties, but they weren’t able to get zoning permits, and the local politicians started to get too curious about the owners, so they abandoned the idea.

Abigail had always loved winter, but seeing it on two hundred acres of mostly undeveloped forest shed new light on the beauty and splendor of ice and snow. When she told Emmett and Zach she’d love to see this place in the summer, they told her she could always come back and spend another two weeks with them. The thought didn’t make Abigail sad. Instead it gave her hope.

At night she made love to both her angels, and even though her ass and pussy were sore and raw each morning, she didn’t care. Time wasn’t going to stop. When she returned to Duluth, her bed would be cold and empty. She didn’t want to waste one second with either of them. They brought her to heights of pleasure she hadn’t known existed, and she knew she’d never find men like them again.

Two days before her vacation was to end, she crawled out of bed where Emmett and Zach were still sleeping to answer a persistent knock on her door. After tossing on a robe, she opened it to find Tiffany standing there, her eyes large and full of worry.

“This just came for you.” Tiffany thrust a telegram into Abigail’s hands.

Abigail’s heart began to race, and fear shot through her as though hot pokers had suddenly taken up residence in her veins. She’d told no one where she was going.

“Thanks, Tiffany.” Abigail closed the door and stared at the paper, afraid to unfold it. She heard footsteps and turned around.

“What’s wrong?” Zach frowned, staring at her hands.

She held it out to him. “I don’t want to read it.”

“Who’s it from?” asked Emmett.

“I don’t know. No one knows I’m here. I’m scared, Emmett.”

He pulled her into his arms. “It’s okay. Whatever it is, we’ll help you deal with it.”

“Want me to read it for you?” asked Zach.

Abigail nodded. She watched the emotions pass over his face as he read it, from disbelief to anger. “This is such fucking bullshit.”

“What? What does it say?”

He held it out at arm’s length. “You’d better read it, sweetheart.”

With trembling fingers, she plucked it from Zach’s hand and read:

Have tried to call you, but your cell is off. E-mails go unanswered. Fired Sharon McKee for not telling me where you really went. Contact me immediately, or I’ll send the Illinois state police to Fox Lake.

“Oh my God…” Abigail would have fallen to the floor if Emmett hadn’t caught her and helped her to the nearest chair. “What the hell? I’m not ten years old anymore. I’m a grown woman. I can go anywhere I fucking well please. He fired Sharon.” She stood and shook the telegram from her father in Emmett’s face. “Fired her! He can’t do that. You can’t fire someone because they covered for a friend. I hope she sues the firm.”

She stomped to where she’d tossed her purse and dug out her cell phone. She hadn’t turned it back on after taking the pictures last week. There were thirty-seven calls from her father, all in the past two days. She erased the voice mail messages without listening to them. He never sent text messages, so she didn’t bother to check any.

“E-mails go unanswered,” she muttered, turning on her laptop. He’d sent her eleven e-mails since yesterday, and she deleted them all without reading them.

“What are you going to do?” asked Emmett.

“I’m going to call him and find out what the hell is going on.”

“Don’t you think you should stop and catch your breath first?”

Zach might as well have asked her to jump off the roof. He didn’t understand. Images of her childhood flashed through her mind.

Dinner at Top of the Harbor Restaurant on her tenth birthday, where her father made her ask the waiter for another napkin because she accidentally dropped hers out of her lap, then made a snide joke about her round thighs, loud enough for the people at the tables near them to hear it.

Her mother calling the principal of her high school to ask him to intervene because she wouldn’t stop sneaking out to see Billy Weston, then having to sit in the office and endure the humiliation while Principal Hall and a guidance counselor wearing too much cologne both lectured her on how “you are who you hang out with.”

The looks on everyone’s faces at the firm when the scandal with Malcolm and Didi broke. Abigail hadn’t exactly been truthful with Emmett and Zach at dinner last week when she told them everyone had been supportive. Only a handful of her coworkers had offered a shoulder to cry on or an ear to listen. Most were as afraid of her father as she was, and thought Abigail had to be the biggest patsy on the planet for having married Malcolm in the first place.

She took a deep breath and stared at her cell phone. What would she say to him? What
could
she say? He had her over a barrel, and that was something Zach and Emmett didn’t know either. She would not ruin this day by burdening them with her issues.

“Could you two excuse me for a moment, please?”

“Not a chance,” said Zach, taking a seat at the table.

“Nope. Make the call in front of us, beautiful.” Emmett took the seat opposite Zach.

If Abigail hadn’t been so agitated and worried, she’d have kissed them both until she couldn’t breathe. They were not only her perfect lovers, right now they were her best friends.

“Daddy, it’s me. I didn’t have my cell on and—”

“Abigail, what the
hell
are you doing in Illinois? You
lied
to your mother and me. This is the most irresponsible thing you’ve ever done. If you aren’t home
today
, I’m calling the police.”

“And what will you tell them? That your twenty-nine-year-old daughter took a vacation you didn’t approve in advance?”

Dead silence greeted her question. Abigail stifled a smile as she realized this was the first time she could remember raising her voice to her father, and it was one of only a handful of times she’d challenged a direct order from him.

“You can’t afford a vacation, Abigail.” His tone was chilly, and it sent a ripple of fear through her. “You owe me a lot of money. Do you want to know why I’ve been trying to reach you? Malcolm has filed a lien on the house. Did you know that?”

Abigail nearly dropped her cell phone. “Can he do that?”

“Yes, he can. You’re both on the deed, along with me. If you hadn’t been
vacationing
for almost two weeks, you’d have received the certified letter. When you didn’t respond, they sent a copy here. Do you have any idea how embarrassing that is for
me
, Abigail? Do you?”

She knew by the look on Emmett and Zach’s faces they could hear her father. He was yelling so loudly she was surprised the people in the other rooms weren’t knocking on her door right now, asking if she was all right.

“As if I didn’t go through enough when your marriage fell apart and your husband stole money from me, now I have to sell the house and turn over one-third of the proceeds to him and his whore!”

“I don’t know what to say.”

Abigail felt drained. This was never going to be over. She owed her father more money than she’d ever care to admit, and she had no doubt he’d sell the home and add Malcolm’s share onto her debt. She was never going to be out from under his thumb or free to live her own life.

For the first time in her adult life, she saw clearly how controlling and cruel he really was. He didn’t use physical cruelty, oh no. He was too clever an attorney for that. He used currency. The home may have been a wedding present, but he’d insisted on being on the deed, just in case, as he’d put it. He held her responsible for the money Malcolm stole, even though she’d been ignorant of it and had nothing to do with it.

If she fought him, he’d take her to court and win. He had every judge in the state in his back pocket. That's why she’d been able to obtain a divorce so easily. Abigail was backed into a corner, and there was no way out.

“Don’t say anything, Abigail. Just get home. Today.”

The line went dead, and Abigail stared at the phone. Emmett and Zach’s comforting arms weren’t enough to erase the hollow, empty feeling inside her. It was over. She had to leave them. If she defied her father and stayed, God only knew what he would do, and she’d rather die than place their resort in jeopardy. This was their business, and she would have no hand in ruining it. They’d been too kind and generous to her for that. Just the fact that her father now knew about it was enough to make her sick to her stomach. If he started digging, their secret might be exposed.

She had no choice. She had to return home and hope that satisfied him enough to leave this place untouched.

* * * *

She didn’t cry as she packed. Even while they watched her with twin expressions of grief, she wouldn’t allow the tears to come. They tried to talk her into staying, and she forced back her true feelings and told them she had to go. She would say no more. If the words started to come tumbling out, she’d never stop them, and then she wouldn’t be able to leave. This was the only way to protect them.

By the time she was finally heading north on US 12 W, it was almost ten in the morning. If she drove with only short stops, she’d be home by five in the afternoon. Tears stung her eyes, and she swiped impatiently at them. Three times Zach called her cell, but she didn’t answer it. There was nothing to say.

Memories assaulted her as she drove, but there was no way to chase them away. Their scent hung in the air. Their touch burned her skin as if they were sitting next to her. She could still feel their mouths on her body. The searing memory of their cocks inside her wasn’t something she would ever escape. Twice she had to pull over and wait for her tears to stop because her vision was too blurry to drive.

By the time she pulled into her driveway, it was nearly six. The house she’d loved no longer felt like home. Inside was cold and dark. She missed the resort and its smells, the soft lighting, and antique furnishings.

She was hungry, her limbs felt heavy, and she’d never experienced such overwhelming despair in her entire life. Not even finding out what Malcolm had done hurt as much as leaving Emmett and Zach.

She took her bags inside and checked her voice mail. Zach hadn’t left a message, but he had sent a text:
Whatever you need for the rest of your life, all you have to do is ask us. We’ll always be here for you.

Abigail sat on the floor of her kitchen and cried until she could barely catch her breath and her sides ached. She had a searing headache from crying all day and eating nothing. There was a bottle of wine in the fridge, and she had no idea how old it was, but she drank the rest of it, took some Motrin, and crawled into her cold, empty bed.

Zach had a splitting headache by the time he finished researching William Bennett Cosslin and his firm, Cosslin, Walters, Ayers, and McLeod. The man had his hands in local and state government so deep, it was no wonder Abigail felt trapped.

“Find anything?” Emmett strolled in, his eyes red and his face drawn.

“Shitloads. He’s a fucking sleazebag, but he’s hidden it so well I don’t think we can pin anything on him. If we piss him off and he starts digging into our past, this resort is history.”

Emmett scoffed, “Maybe we should summon Lilith?”

Zach shot him a droll look. “Don’t think I haven’t considered it.”

“That’s why she left so abruptly, isn’t it? Abigail, I mean. She’s afraid.”

“Terrified. I’m convinced of it. She left to protect us. You saw her face when she realized her father knew where she was.”

“We should have told her we love her.”

Zach shook his head and ran his hands through his hair. “No. That would have made things worse for her.”

“Zach, I can’t just let her go.”

“Neither can I. But what the hell can we do? If you have a plan, let’s hear it.”

“Okay, but it’s radical.”

Zach almost smiled. “I’m listening.”

* * * *

Abigail called her mother in the morning and talked just long enough to let her know she’d come home the night before. Her mother begged her to call her father, but Abigail told her to do it for her. Then she ate two slices of toast and crawled back into bed, but not before turning off her cell.

When she woke, it was dark. She ordered a pizza and walked to the corner grocery store to buy a few things before it arrived. While she ate, she flipped through the channels on TV, but nothing kept her attention. Everything reminded her of Zach and Emmett. The guy in the Febreze commercial looked too much like Emmett. One of the actors in a sitcom she’d never watched before resembled Zach.

She turned it off and poured another glass of wine, trying not to picture their faces or hear their voices in her head. She might as well have tried not to breathe. What the hell was she going to do? She had to talk to her father, and she had to go back to work.

Work. Something Zach said to her came rushing back like a fresh breeze.
“I’m simply trying to figure out why someone with your skills and experience would stay in a place that has to make you terribly uncomfortable every day.”

Just because she owed her father money didn’t mean she had to work for him. She could find another job and still pay him back. She’d sign an agreement if he insisted, but she had every intention of paying him back. Even though she would always believe she didn’t really owe him the money Malcolm had stolen.