“What story are you spinning, partner?” Ky came into the room after he was able to check his thoughts.
With a sly wink to Gemma first, Jon said, “No spin, just facts, Ky. I was telling Miss Laine—”
“Gemma,” she corrected.
“Gemma.” Jon nodded. “About the first time I met your family.”
With an inward groan, Ky shook his head and brought his plate to the microwave. “I’d rather forget that,” he said, timing the appliance to reheat his food.
“It sounds like you would,” Gemma said, a wry little line dancing across her lips.
As much as Ky loved his large, boisterous, and utterly lovable family, they could be trying on his soul, especially his six older brothers, who never missed a chance to embarrass their baby brother.
“I’ve got older sisters,” Gemma said, lifting her water bottle. “I know what it’s like.”
“I have to think the torture a brother employs is different from a sister’s,” Ky said over his shoulder.
She considered it while she took a mouthful of her water and he brought his reheated dish back to the table.
“Maybe,” she said. “Brothers will probably be more physically exacting while sisters are more like emotional hit men, getting inside your head, niggling, and torturing you to death.”
In the next breath, she sat her water bottle down on the table with a plop, her face going gray.
“Are you okay?” Ky asked. He wanted to reach out and touch her, but knew it wouldn’t be wise.
“Sorry.” The vigorous shake she gave her head tossed her hair to and fro. “That was a poor choice of words after what happened today.”
The trio was silent for a few moments.
“It’s getting late,” Gemma said. Ky was quick to notice the smile she’d had moments before was now just a memory.
“Don’t worry about the dishes,” Jon told her when she started to bring hers to the sink. “Ky and I have a system. Cleanup’s my job.”
She nodded and grabbed her laptop.
“Everything you’ll need should be in the closet in your room,” Ky said. “Towels, fresh linens. Just let me know if there’s anything you might want that your sister didn’t pack.”
“It’s fine,” she told him. “I’ve got all I really need.”
Before quitting to her room she turned to them. “I—well.”
Both men allowed her a moment to collect her thoughts.
“I just wanted to thank you. Both. I know being stuck here with me is the last thing you want to be doing about now, and believe me, if I could undo what happened today, I would.”
“Don’t worry about any of that,” Jon said.
“It shouldn’t take long to find the men responsible,” Ky added. “And we’ll get the man who hurt you.”
She looked from one of them to the other, her gaze coming to rest on Ky. “I have no doubt about that.”
Chapter Three
She should have slept like the dead after everything she’d gone through, but sleep eluded Gemma most of the night.
It wasn’t that she was in an unfamiliar, uncomfortable bed; Gemma could sleep anywhere easily, and the bed was sound.
It wasn’t that her bruised knee was causing her discomfort; she’d propped it up on a pillow and hadn’t needed to resort to any of the pain pills the doctor in the emergency room had prescribed.
It wasn’t even because she was concerned about cancelling her shoots for the week; when she’d called her clients on Ky’s secured cellphone, explaining that she was “sick,” they’d been beyond accommodating, both telling her they would wait until she was better and could fit them into her schedule. They wanted her to do their photographs, no one else. Gemma got a mild ego boost knowing her work meant something special to them.
No, the unease that filtered through her mind all night had nothing to do with any of those things and everything to do with Special Agent Kyros Pappandreos.
He was annoyingly arrogant, professionally polished, too handsome for his own good, and made Gemma’s stomach flutter every time he speared those ocean-blue-green eyes her way.
When was the last time a man had made her insides quiver?
In all truth, it had been a long, long while and it bothered her in more ways than she could count.
Gemma wasn’t ignorant of the way she looked. She knew she was considered attractive and had only to glance at her sister Kandy for confirmation. The two of them could have been twins and Kandy was gorgeous by anyone’s standards. But even though they looked alike, they were very different in their thoughts about certain things, men being the uppermost.
Kandy had given her heart freely and unconditionally to her husband, Josh. He’d come into her life to protect her from a stalker and wound up breaking down all the walls and barriers she’d erected to make sure her heart was never broken by a man. Gemma’s walls and barriers were made of much stronger brick and mortar.
She’d been a shy and scared ten-year-old when her father had decided being married and having to support a wife and seven daughters was more than he’d ever bargained for.
Gemma, too young to understand the grown-up events which had led to her parents’ split, felt the biting sting of abandonment hard. She grew introverted and distrustful of anyone but her family.
As a teenager she’d grown into her height and blossoming beauty but had still been crippled with the paralyzing shyness of her younger years. When Kandy had given her a camera for her fifteenth birthday, Gemma blossomed like a rose waiting for spring sunshine.
Overnight, she found her life’s passion. Behind the camera lens she became a different person: cool, self-assured, and cocky. Her shyness flew the moment she winked an eye into her viewfinder.
With her new self-confidence, Gemma allowed herself to start acting like a teenager and did the one thing all her contemporaries did that simply terrified her: date.
There was no lack of boys who wanted to be with her. Hair the color of ink framed a face with eyes a vivid blue no one could look away from. Tall, lithe, and angular, she quickly became the It girl in her class. And just as quickly lost her heart.
Her first boyfriend, being a typical teenage male ruled by raging hormones, had wanted nothing more than to claim he’d had sex with her, which he did, to one and all. That it was a lie, no one cared, despite Gemma’s protestations. Just as soon as the rumor started, he’d broken up with her.
The next boy to come into her life had expected her to do the same with him as he’d heard she’d done with the other. When Gemma refused, he’d become physical, smacking her and forcibly restraining her in the backseat of his car while he brutally shoved his fingers inside her. He laughed when she cried, telling her no one would believe her if she tried to get him in trouble. Her easy-girl reputation would negate any claims she made about being assaulted. He dropped her off at home without so much as a word or another look. Mortified, Gemma never told anyone what he’d done to her. Thoughts of her father’s betrayal, coupled now with this boy’s attack, consumed her and she spent the remainder of her high school career the whispered subject of rumors and painful innuendo by her peers.
College had fared little better. She’d hoped higher education and age would have instilled a sense of maturity into the male species. Disappointment met her at every corner when the reality of drunken and sex-starved frat boys spilled around her.
When Kandy hired Gemma as her primary photographer and launched her professional career with the very first cookbook