Sacrifice Read Online Free Page B

a determination of his own.
    Did he love her? He sighed with
weary acceptance. Yeah, he loved her, more than he had thought it possible to
love a woman.
    “More than you know,” he finally
said, his own need echoing through his body. “More than you could ever know,
Mother.”
    For a moment compassion filled her
eyes. She had waited years for him to find the one woman he felt he could spend
the rest of his life with, and settle down into a relationship that fulfilled
him, as much as her marriage to his father had fulfilled her.
    “Then you have a choice to make,”
she said gently. “All her life Kimberly has been forced to choose, and always
it’s been a choice that’s ripped another wound in her soul. Can you ask her to
add your heart and your needs to her burden?”
    He stared back at her, restraining
the fury erupting inside him. Swallowing tightly, he shook his head with a
rough, negative movement. He couldn’t force her to make such a choice, and they
both knew it. But he didn’t know if he could force himself to let her go,
either.
    Carl Stanton had a lot to pay for.
It had been the nasty divorce with his wife that had spurred the first of the
rumors. Kia Stanton had wanted out of that marriage, and when Carl had refused,
she had let the first rumor free. But Kia was no longer associated with the
membership there, so how had the rumors of his and Kimberly’s membership leaked
out? Even more worrisome though, was the threat that his father’s previous
association would be revealed as well.
    “Does Madison know about Father’s
connection to The Club?” he asked her then. “Is this causing you problems?”
    He would kill the bastard if he had
dared to abuse the petite, fragile woman that Jared knew his mother was.
    She smiled mirthlessly. “You forget
Jared; this is a marriage of convenience. But as far as I know, Daniel hasn’t
heard any rumors he shouldn’t have. But if he did, it would serve him no good.
He can’t harm me with it. But that isn’t the point. What will you do now?”
    What else could he do?
    “Let her go,” he whispered
bitterly. “The only thing I can do.”

Chapter Four
     
    She could have been a spy, Kimberly
thought, but the additional training didn’t go hand in hand with enforced
chastity. There was always modeling, but Kimberly always thought that doing
without pizza and losing that extra fifteen pounds that tormented her would
have just been too painful. And being a rich man’s mistress was just out of the
question; there was only so much shopping one could do before it became rather
boring. Besides, just like being a spy, it would require the loss of her
virginity. Everything else was just boring, so she joined the Police Academy
instead, going from there to several security agencies that specialized in
protection.
    The work wasn’t really abnormally
dangerous, and she got to wear a gun. She liked that part. Especially when the
assignments required her to be in close proximity to arrogant men with more
testosterone than good sense. Those assignments were few and far between
thankfully, but occasionally they reared their ugly heads. Then there were
those assignments that just sucked. The ones that she knew were going to test
her patience and her training. This was one of them.
    She stared back at her boss and one
of her dearest friends, dumbfounded, restraining her disbelieving laughter.
This one was just too bizarre to be real.
    “Could you repeat that?” she asked
carefully, certain she had to have heard wrong.
    Richard Decker’s thick gray brows
snapped into an instant frown.
    “You heard me, Kimberly,” he said
with careful emphasis. “You will be assigned to Raddington’s team, despite the
alert that your welfare could be on the line as well. You will stick close to
Raddington, and the team will surround you for the duration of time it takes to
ascertain if the threat is real or imagined. You’ll head out to the Raddington
Farm tonight, and you will stay