Free Passions Recalled: Forbidden Passions, Book 2 by Loribelle Hunt

so at first, but then Celeste got close to someone who helped her recover. Emotionally started to rebound, I mean, and he—Derek—started offering to help us out of the mess. With a hefty percentage of the business going to him, of course. Even that didn’t make me really suspicious. Not at first.”
    Jason gripped the phone so hard the plastic casing cracked in his hand. Derek was the mysterious boyfriend? Like hell that was just a coincidence.
    “It was the women,” Michael said.
    What the fuck was he going on about now?
    “Come again?”
    “A suspicious number of women have gone missing recently. There wasn’t any kind of pattern, no connections between them—except they were all humans from this area.”
    “Until?”
    “The last three have all been connected to my family in some way.”
    Fuck, and Celeste had almost been the fourth. How close had it been? How had she escaped? He remembered the truck that had almost run him off the road at the beach.
    “Do you know anyone who drives a white F150?”
    He heard movement in the hallway and turned to meet Celeste’s gaze. She was pale and shaking, and he immediately stepped toward her. She and Michael answered his question at the same time, Michael by swearing and Celeste with a shiver.
    “Derek,” she whispered. “It’s Derek’s truck. I saw him kill someone.”
    Jason set the phone on an end table and pulled her into his arms.
    “It’s okay, baby. You’re safe here.”
    She pressed her head against his chest and shook it.
    “I’m not. He’ll keep coming. He’s relentless in everything else he does, and what choice does he have now?”
    Jason’s chest rumbled in response. “Let him come. I protect my own. You have to trust me to take care of you, Celeste.”
    She leaned back, tilting her head to smile up at him.
    “For some crazy reason I do.”
    They heard yelling through the phone receiver, Michael trying to get his attention. Releasing her, he stretched an arm out and picked the phone up. My dad? she mouthed. He smiled in response.
    “What else, Michael? I can see him wanting to cover up what he’s doing, but why target women important to your family? Why the business arrangement?”
    Wind gusted against the house, banging debris against an outside wall, and Michael’s answer was garbled. The phone lost its signal before Jason could ask him to repeat himself. Frustrated, he turned it off and tossed it to the couch where it fell between the back and a cushion.
    “Fuck,” Jason muttered.
    Celeste had backed away and huddled in the entry to the hallway, instinctively going for the interior walls when the wind picked up. She bit her lower lip and tried to hurry her mind through the last few minutes’ revelations. First, there was the dream recounting her family’s deceit and Derek killing the blonde woman, and now what little she’d overheard of the phone conversation.
    “What women?” she finally asked.
    She felt a sense of urgency, knew they needed to work it all out quickly. Celeste felt watched, stalked. Goose bumps broke out across her arms, and the back of her neck tingled. They couldn’t hear much over the wind and rain, but she knew Derek was out there somewhere. Watching. Waiting.
    Jason didn’t answer right away. With one hand on his hip, he bent his head forward and massaged the back of his neck with the other hand. He retrieved the phone and put it in the hall closet. When he returned his gaze to her, there was a feral gleam in his eyes.
    “You were involved with Derek?”
    She almost smiled at his emphasis on the past tense and nodded. His expression hardened, and he approached her slowly with the stealth of a big cat. A predatory, pissed-off cat. Her heart skipped a beat. She glanced down the hall behind her and considered making a run for the bedroom.
    “I wouldn’t if I were you.”
    “Wouldn’t what?” she whispered.
    “Run.”
    “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
    Like hell she wouldn’t. He was within arm’s reach