Stone-Cold Lover by Mel Teshco Read Free Book Online

father hired him almost a decade ago.” She paused, her thumbs fidgeting over her interlaced fingers.
    “Go on,” he encouraged.
    She took a breath. “At some point along the line, he stopped being an employee, and became almost part of the family.”
    Almost, but not quite. Cray didn’t need a psychology degree to imagine how that would have affected a man who was perhaps already close to the edge.
    “Max looked out for me and for a short time it felt…nice.” She sighed, her slim shoulders rigid and yet fragile against the tiny straps of her black dress.
    Cray drew her close. “What happened?”
    Her head came to rest on his shoulder. “It was the anniversary of my mother’s death. Max came to comfort me.” She shrugged. “I was hungry for affection—for love, of any kind.”
    Cray scowled into the darkness. Max was nothing but a predator. He swept her a long look. “He found you at your lowest ebb and took advantage.”
    “If I hadn’t been intimate with him he’d never have—”
    “What, tried to kill you as well?” He took a long, deep breath. Just the thought of that man trying to harm Loretta churned his gut like a spin cycle. “He was an adult obsessed with a woman who didn’t return his feelings. That’s hardly your fault.”
    She sighed and he felt her tension ease. “I guess…I guess you’re right.”
    “Where was your dad when Max came looking for you?”
    She blinked hard then examined the dark night sky. “He’d left that morning on some urgent business. I knew better though.”
    She swiped a hand over her face. “Their wedding anniversary, Mum’s birthday…he always made himself absent after she died. All those memories, it hurt too much for him to be home.”
    Cray frowned. That would have offered no comfort to a grieving young girl. A child who’d witnessed her mother’s abduction. He didn’t know the whole story but he knew she’d been home when kidnappers had stormed the Shaw house and taken Kaitlin, her mum.
    Loretta had opened up about Max, perhaps now was the time for her to release a little of her burden about her mum. “What do you remember about your mum’s disappearance?”
    Her shoulders drooped and her stare fell, her voice low and distant. “I don’t remember a lot. But the men who broke in wore masks. They ignored me. I stood frozen, unable to move.”
    She spoke without emotion and Cray realized that shock still paralyzed her, all these years later.
    “They took Mum captive, and I watched as she kicked and struggled. Her screams were muffled by something they’d pushed into her mouth.”
    His heart twisted. He hated having her relive the pain but, as with a splinter buried deep and spreading infection, she had to get it out. “If you hadn’t stayed silent and still, you might very well have been taken too.”
    But she didn’t seem to hear him. Instead her eyes stared out over the city lights. “They dragged her outside and finally I made myself follow. From the doorway, I watched them shove her into a van with black windows. They didn’t even spare me a glance as they took off, tires squealing.”
    His muscles clenched with the futile need to track down the animals who’d taken away Loretta’s mother and emotionally tortured an innocent little girl. “I’m sorry,” he rasped. “Sweetheart, I truly am.”
    “I waited and waited. But they…she never came back.”
    Lincoln had told Cray that he’d found his daughter some two or three hours after the kidnapping. She’d stood in the doorway, frozen and silent.
    Apparently she’d been questioned. But through everybody’s cajoling and coaxing, she’d not uttered a word.
    Cray stifled the urge to soothe the taut lines of her slender body, somehow heal her emotional wounds. But he couldn’t yet. She needed to cleanse the torment eating at her soul. He should know. He understood firsthand the suffering endured by losing family.
    “You can’t blame yourself.” He needed her to open up and