Page 8 of Nightfire

But because she looked so lost, so alone. She was slightly built, with pale skin and pretty, delicate features. A slightly overlarge mouth, huge light brown, almost golden eyes.

Her clothes were expensive. So were her shoes and purse. Expensive, elegant, discreet. This was a lady of taste and of breeding and she looked rich.

Didn’t matter.

He and his brothers had seen a lot of everything pass through their doors. Women who’d been beaten up by low-life drug-addict husbands and lovers, sure. But also wives of lawyers and doctors and even a Senator. The rich weren’t immune to the joys of beating up on women and children. If anything, they were able to hide it better, and for longer.

The police were also more willing to turn a blind eye.

The rich wives who ended up as one of RBKs Lost Ones sometimes tried going to the police, but their husbands often wielded enormous power and were able to get away with things poorer men went to jail for. The wives of the rich fucks were just as beaten down as their poorer sisters.

This woman, this Chloe Mason, belonged to the rich, there was no mistaking it. And not the new rich, either. She had that understated elegance of someone who didn’t need to make a splash, someone for whom good taste came naturally.

From head to toe she was groomed and lovely. But there was something underneath those pretty, expensive designer duds that was a little less lovely.

She moved slowly, exactly like someone who’d been punched hard, in a place covered by clothes. That was a little trick fuckhead men who liked beating up on women and kids learned. Their rages might be uncontrollable, but boy they knew enough to reason it out and punch where it wouldn’t show. Last week a banker’s wife had come in without a visible scratch on her. Except, of course, for a ruptured spleen that had required eight hours of surgery six months before. It had followed broken ribs and a punch to the liver so hard the liver had sustained damage.

Shitheads knew what they were doing, all right. Even in a fucking rage they knew enough to cover their tracks.

Someone had done something like that to Chloe Mason, who moved so very carefully, as if she would fall down if she didn’t watch it.

Oh man. Who could do that to someone like her? Who could do it to any woman or child? But especially to Chloe Mason, with her soft skin and gentle features and slender build?

Mike was going to take care of her, because that’s what RBK did. And because taking care of her, helping her, was going to make him feel better, take away the bitter taste of last night’s disaster.

Mike was a good guy. He knew he was a good guy. He’d remained a good guy in appalling circumstances, because he’d rather die than hurt someone weaker, hurt a woman.

He’d hurt a woman last night and it would be a long time before he forgot it, before he could think about it without sweating. Helping this gentle-looking, very pretty woman was going to help his karma in the universe, so he wouldn’t come back in the next life as a toad.

He glanced at Harry, expecting him to say something, then glanced again.

What the fuck?

It was like Harry was frozen. He simply stood there, staring at her. Not in a sexual way. Like Sam, Harry loved his wife fiercely and absolutely. He had zero interest in other women since his marriage. But something about this woman riveted his attention. And blocked his tongue, because he wasn’t saying anything.

Harry knew as well as Mike that these women needed reassurance. They did not need a male staring at them. Particularly a tall, strong male. That kind of staring came off as aggression and women like Chloe Mason had had a bellyful of that.

Mike elbowed Harry in the ribs, to no effect. Okay, so Harry was out for the count. It was up to him.

“Welcome, Ms. Mason,” he said gently to the frightened woman slowly crossing Harry’s office. Since Harry wasn’t moving, Mike walked around the desk and approached her slowly. No sudden moves, just nice and easy.

She stared up at him and he had to jerk his gaze away because he was staring too, just like his idiot brother Harry.

Damn, she was…she was lovely. The old-fashioned word was exactly right. Nowadays beautiful was the technical term used for a woman who worked on herself, got herself some surgical enhancement, who stood out because of the way she was dressed and was made up.

Chloe Mason had a different kind of beauty, made up of perfect skin, delicate features, soft blonde hair, huge golden eyes, none of that, as far as he could see, enhanced.

So, that’s what she’d look like in the morning. After sex.

Mike squelched that thought immediately, ashamed of himself. The last thing this woman needed was a man she looked to for help coming on to her.

She was looking up at him anxiously, then back at Harry, clutching a purse and a big manila envelope, visibly worried because his fuckhead brother had his head up his ass.

Since she looked like she was about to fall down, Mike chanced it and placed a hand under her elbow, as gentlemanly-like as possible, though he wouldn’t object to carrying her to the client chair.

No. Not going there, he told himself sternly.

Women who’d been beaten up had antennae that quivered when men were around and in their space, because men in their space was a situation that often ended badly. He didn’t want Chloe Mason to have even a moment’s anxiety because of him.