Free The Strength of Three by Annmarie McKenna Page A

many times he belittled her or beat her.
    Chris shivered. The rain had put a chill in the air. Then again, it could be the two men still standing at her back, their mere presence lending strength. The small gathering who’d come to Lana Marshall’s final resting place had long since disbanded but Chris could not find the strength to move. Yet not once had TJ or Jon tried to get her to. Each had a hand on her shoulders where their fingers gave her a continual massage.
    She should be crying. She should be bawling uncontrollably and asking God why he’d allowed this. Would it help? No. God hadn’t killed her mother. Maybe he’d saved her instead since she hadn’t seemed able to save herself.
    Chris had cut all ties to her father a few years ago, but in doing so she’d been severed from her mother as well. Not so her younger brother. Somehow she must have done all her crying in the past and over the last couple of days because now she was dry.
    She sucked in a breath and held it, inhaling the smells of the rain and the fresh flowers and the damp earth her mother would be lowered into as soon as she moved away. Off to her left, trying to be discreet, were two men dressed in grey jumpsuits waiting for her to leave so they could do their job.
    Jon’s hand sifted through her hair and she dropped her shoulders.
    “You okay, baby?” TJ’s lips caught on her ear.
    She nodded. “Yes.”
    He came to the front and kneeled before her, taking her hands in his. “Is there anything we can do for you?”
    “No.” She gave a short laugh. “You’ve already done way too much.”
    Jon sat in the chair next to her. “We haven’t done anything.”
    “Are you kidding me? You brought me all the way out here, in your personal airplane no less, listened to me cry for hours on end and came to a funeral for a woman you’ve never met. You call that doing nothing?”
    Jon’s lips quirked into a smile. It made her tummy flip and sent an arrow of hunger to her clit. She jerked her gaze away only to have it fall on TJ, whose face mirrored Jon’s. She should not be feeling like this right now. Not in the midst of burying her mother. Yet the hardening of her nipples told her that her body didn’t care where the hell she was.
    “What’s next, baby?” TJ put a hand on her bare knee. His thumb caressed her skin and she had to swallow and lick her lips to keep herself from tackling him to the ground.
    This is wrong. It took a Herculean effort but Chris managed to push his hand off.
    One of his eyebrows rose. “Too much help in taking your mind off things?”
    “I’m supposed to be in mourning,” she murmured.
    Jon’s lips brushed her ear. “I don’t think you have any tears left in you, sugar. No one can say you haven’t done any mourning.”
    “It just doesn’t seem right to be sitting here thinking about anything other than the fact that my mother is dead.”
    TJ sighed. “No one is judging you, sweetheart. Everyone grieves in their own way at their own pace.”
    She sniffed and nodded. He was right but it still felt wrong. Like she was betraying her own mother. “She always chose my father over my brother and me. I never understood why she liked getting the shit kicked out of her. Still, she is…was my mother. She gave birth to me and at least had some input in raising me.” So why couldn’t she drum up more sympathy?
    “You want to go home?” Jon settled his hand on the back of her neck and massaged.
    Yes. “No.” She couldn’t just leave. Not without going to the house to be there for her brother one last time before she left for good. The only reason she would ever come home was gone now.
    Carter would be there and she’d have to deal with his pathetic attempts at demanding she loan him money to support his habit. He was as big as their dad and just as ugly with his alcohol.
    Maybe she shouldn’t go to the house. It might be safer, body and mind, to leave and never look back.
    “No. No, I need to do this. I need