Page 19 of The Risk

They had gotten damned lucky a doctor was the one who had found them.

“Bullshit. Lacy couldn’t have saved her if you hadn’t gotten her there in the first place. If you hadn’t been there... I’d have lost my sister. I’ll never forget that.”

“I think we can do better.” Gene went to the space between the chair where his sister slept and Chantal. “With them. I think we have been idiots where the girls—all the girls—have been concerned. It occurred to me out there that I really don’t know them at all. Any of them, at all. Greer is keeping secrets right now, Gia is afraid of every guy who gets close, Genesis...”

He hadn’t even known what name his sister wanted to be called. Because he had kept that wall between them.

The time for walls was over now.

He was opening up in a way he hadn’t in a long time. But... this man was his closest friend on the planet. One of them, anyway—Chad and Hudson Hanan.

Those two other men understood him. Without him having to say the words.

“I had the same realization while I was with your sister, just waiting. I never want to feel that way again.” Chad’s hand almost lingered over Genesis’s braid.

“We make a deal right now. We do a better damned job of taking care of the women who matter most. No matter what.”

“No matter what.” Then Chad slung an arm over Gene’s shoulder and hugged him. “Thank you. I have my sister back because you were with her. I’ll owe you for that forever.”

Were there any other words they could say?

Gene made his sisters and Chantal a silent vow as the hours dragged on.

He was going to keep them safe from that moment on—no matter what.

As he watched Chantal for the longest time, he knew he would never feel the same about her ever again.

She’d taken his soul out there on that highway, and he was never going to try to take it back. Now he just had to make up to her for all the ways he’d screwed up before.

When Chad was gone, and Chantal woke hours later, Gene was there. He just talked to her softly until she drifted back to sleep, her free hand held in his.

He never wanted to let her go. Now he had to figure out how to show her the kind of man he’d become. He’d changed. He wasn’t the same man he’d been that morning.

And he never would be again.

16

At the Barratt-Finley Creek,the most exclusive hotel in Texas... in a suite. Of her own. With Gene Hiller and his five-year-old son on one side. And her parents on the other.

Chantal hadn’t exactly planned on this.

Charlie had driven her entire family to the hotel and rushed her upstairs to the penthouse level. She wasn’t exactly the kind of woman who did penthouse hotel suites. This was the most luxurious room she had ever stayed in, in her entire life. The owner of the hotel was a friend of her niece Charlotte and Chantal’s sister-in-law Rory. They’d arranged a stay here as a safe house. On a private family floor that required a key code to even access the elevators.

Thisparticular suite belonged to the sheriff of Value and his wife. His extended family owned the hotel. Gene was in the suite owned by the mayor of Finley Creek. Her parents were staying in a suite owned by a man who owned TBFN, an actual TV and movie network.

This was a bit outside her norm.

Someone knocked on her door. Chantal opened it quickly, expecting it to be her mother. Her mother had been hoveringsince the moment Chantal had opened her eyes. No surprise—her mother always had whenever something had happened to Chantal.

It wasn’t her mother.

Gene stood there in front of her, his arms crossed over his broad chest.

It was the first time they’d been alone. She wasn’t counting those minutes in her hospital room when someone could walk in at any moment.

Chantal’s mouth went dry.

As she remembered what he had promised her out there. When they had been the center of one another’s worlds. When all they had had was each other and the hope that Charlie was coming for them. “Gene... where is Calvin?”