Diablo Blanco Club: Unfair Advantage Read Free

about this?” Richard met his gaze. His gray eyes were disbelieving, almost accusatory.
    “Why should I?”
    “You’ve spent the last eight years waiting, Bryce. Are you going to let another man take what you’ve been preparing?” He shook his head, the tight brown curls barely moving. “Hell, I haven’t been able to figure out why you just didn’t claim her when she first showed up.”
    “She wasn’t ready.” The tension in his neck eased as Bryce recalled the anger and defiance dancing in Lawrence’s brown gaze. In many ways, she’d been wise beyond her twenty-two years, but in the most important ones, she’d been far too young for what he wanted.
    “How? She was interested. I watched her trying to get your attention.”
    Bryce watched her rebuff another of Victor’s touches. From the stiffening of the other man’s body, the grip he had on his fork, and the short, quick stabs he used to spear his food, Bryce suspected he’d become more aggressive in his next attempt. “She didn’t trust.”
    “Excuse me?”
    His attention stayed on Lawrence and Victor, although he could see Richard shift his attention between him and the other pair from the corner of his eye. “When she came to me, Lawrence was incapable of trusting any man.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Didn’t you ever notice she never allowed any one, especially a man, to get behind her or between her and an exit?” Bryce glanced at his friend, surprised he’d missed such an obvious clue. It had frustrated the hell out of him eight years ago when he’d occasionally look up to see the heat of attraction in her eyes. The moment he smiled or started to approach, the fires were banked, and the shield snapped back into place.
    Richard cursed beneath his breath. “You think she was raped?”
    Bryce gave a quick nod. “It was my original conclusion. I had Henderson run a background check for me.”
    “And?”
    “No rape. There were allegations of abuse, physical not sexual, when she was eleven, just before her parents died.” He didn’t reveal the details, but he did have to concentrate to keep from crushing the cup in his hand. “She and her sister were taken in by Gino Laguardi and his wife and brought here to San Diablo.” Bryce sipped his coffee, remembering the lecture he’d received from Gino about treating Lawrence like the lady she was. If the man had detected even a hint of what Bryce had imagined sharing with his precious foster daughter, Gino would have never signed the contract to merge his ship-building business with Halsey’s. “Getting her to this point has been a battle.”
    “A fruitless one if you’re going to allow that snake charmer to poach on your grounds,” Richard warned.
    “It took nine months to get her to the point where she would stay in my office to discuss the shipping schedules and the delivery contracts without double-checking to make sure her path to the door was free.” Bryce’s fingers ticked off each of the points as he mentioned them. “Another two years to get her to come out to my home in order to help organize a dinner party and hostess it for me. And another six months after that to get her to voice her opinion without being afraid I’d retaliate in some way. I just about came the first time she argued with me over a comment I’d made about Mike and his career and didn’t run when I yelled back.”
    Richard’s chuckle and nod reminded Bryce his friend had been present at the heated discussion over Mike’s career path. “She did have a point, though. Mike is a hell of a photojournalist.”
    “That goes without argument.” Bryce nodded when the waiter approached offering to refill his cup and cleared the finished meals from the table. Waiting until the server had left, he kept his gaze on Victor and his assistant. The set of her shoulders and the way she watched Victor were familiar to Bryce. She could trust a few people only so far before she froze up. Pushing her beyond those