In the days and weeks that followed the attack, the Ava he knew and loved disappeared. He tried to talk to her, to be there for her while she recovered, but she distanced herself from him. He had attempted to talk to her brothers about what she was going through, but they both insisted she just needed time. His frustration and the pain he felt at what she was clearly going through, alone, just grew. When Declan had asked him to join the military with him, at first he’d said no. However, in the end, he just needed to get away. Ava still wouldn’t see him and it was eating him alive. He figured maybe they both needed some time apart. He came back home to see her on every leave, but his Avie never returned. The little hellcat he had once known was now a reserved shell of her former self. When his tour ended, he was in complete limbo, so he re-upped with Declan, needing time to figure out what happened next for him.
After he left the military, he’d decided to take advantage of the training he had received in the marines and opened his own security company. A couple of guys he’d served with wanted to come in as partners, and East Coast Security was born. Now, several years later, they had been successful beyond any of their expectations. He, Dominic Brady, and Gage Hyatt mainly ran the day-to-day operations while their employees handled the work on-site. Jason Danvers, the CEO of Danvers International and a client, had offered them space for their corporate offices, which was convenient since they were located in a high-rise in downtown Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. East Coast also handled personal security for Jason’s family. His wife and child were rarely without a security tail.
Mac had also made sure that Ava was covered. Since the bastard who raped her all those years ago was never arrested, Mac made it his business to make sure nothing ever happened to her again. After he’d been home from the marines for a while, they managed to resume some part of the friendship that they’d once had. A lot of their free time was spent together, but for Mac it hadn’t been nearly enough. Sometimes he thought he saw something that looked like romantic feelings when she was looking at him on the rare, unguarded occasion, but they were gone so fast he wasn’t sure if they were ever there. He had loved Ava for years . . . and he had no idea how she felt about him.
Watching over Ava so closely also had a downside. He knew entirely too much about her personal life. Every couple of months, someone new would spend the evening at her house and walk out the door looking rumpled but satisfied. It was never the same man twice, though. It tore him up to read those reports from her security tail. To know that someone else was touching the woman he loved while he was standing around on the sidelines. In those moments he would worry about invading her privacy and consider whether to continue monitoring her safety from afar, but he couldn’t take the chance that any harm would befall her ever again.
Of course, he couldn’t say that he’d been a saint either. He was a man and he had needs. He had slept with the occasional woman when the need was there. He wasn’t vain, but he knew that women found him attractive, and it was never a hardship to find a willing woman to spend a night with. He and Declan had found many of them during their tours of duty. It had just never meant any more to him than filling a physical need. Had Ava said the word, he would have stopped seeing other women and been faithful to only her without a single qualm about stepping into a serious relationship.
When Declan had surprised them all by falling in love with Ella Webber, the receptionist at Danvers, Mac suddenly took notice of the hollowness that he had felt for years. Suddenly, it had become almost unbearable. Then when Declan married and started a family almost overnight, it had forced Mac to make a difficult decision. He had to move on with his life. He wanted a wife and a family in the near future, and he had to accept that Ava might never be at the same point in her life.
There was no choice left but for him to start pulling away, inch by painful inch. He had asked Gwen Day, who worked at Danvers as well, out on a date. She was an attractive woman with long red hair and an outgoing personality. Although she didn’t make him weak in the knees, he was attracted to her, and she seemed to feel the same.
They had been dating for a couple of months now and his frequent dinners with Ava had all but stopped. He knew he couldn’t have both. There was no way he could move past her with someone else and still spend so much time alone with her. It was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. He missed her so much he physically ached. But he couldn’t keep going on as he had been. He wasn’t doing either of them any favors. Maybe without him as a crutch, Ava would be able to move forward. Sometimes you had to take the training wheels off and see if you fell on your face or made it on your own. This was as much for her as for him. He just had to remember that.
Chapter Three
“Oh my God, what’s he done now?”
Ava scowled at her assistant and future sister-in-law, Emma Davis, as she settled into a seat in front of her desk. Ava had been a vice president at Danvers International since she and Brant sold their family business to Jason Danvers. Truthfully, she enjoyed the work as well as the challenge of something new.
Ava gave an unladylike snort at Emma’s question and resigned herself to playing twenty questions. There was no way her nosy assistant was going to let her off without explaining her shittier-than-usual mood. She gave her best innocent look and said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Don’t you have some work to do in your own office?”
Emma smirked back at her disgruntled expression, knowing by now that her bark was worse than her bite. Ava didn’t have many close friends, and with Mac now mostly avoiding her, Emma was pretty much it. Oh, Ava would never let the other woman know it, but she had grown to love her dearly since her engagement to her brother Brant. Between Emma and her other brother Declan’s wife, Ella, family occasions were no longer akin to a gathering at the morgue. Emma and Ella had breathed some much-needed life into the Stone family. “Nah, I’m on a break, so I have time.”
Rolling her eyes, Ava said, “A break, huh? You seem to have a lot of those.” Secretly, Ava knew why Brant had enjoyed arguing with Emma when she worked as his assistant before their engagement. It was just freaking fun. Emma was actually fabulous at her job and took a lot of the load from Ava’s shoulders.
“All right, enough of this stalling crap. What’s happening with Mac? I take it you’ve spoken to him again, since you’re acting like someone with a monthlong case of PMS.”