by Nashoda Rose
“Marker?”
“Debt.”
Before I could ask what debt he owed to an ex-Special Forces guy, Deaglan pulled into the driveway and shut off the car. I reached over and touched his arm before he got out.
“Please don’t mention the mugging to my dad,” I said.
He scowled. “It wasn’t a mugging. You need to get that through your head, baby.”
I hesitated. “I get it. I just don’t want to get it.” Because it was a lot easier thinking it was a random mugging rather than a dangerous guy with a knife who wanted to find out who I was because I’d been with Deaglan.
“And your dad should know what’s going on,” he said. “But it’s not my place to tell him, unless things change. Then I will, Eva.” He opened the door and got out.
My dad went home after having a beer with Deaglan on the front porch, chatting about rugby while I sat on the porch swing, knees bent with my arms curled around them.
Deaglan sat beside me and why I was curled up in a ball at the far end of the swing because his thighs were parted and relaxed, arm lying casually on the back of the swing, and a beer in his other hand perched on his thigh.
After my dad left, I headed into the kitchen with the empty beer bottles. “I’m going to lock up and head home,” I called to Deaglan.
I bent and dropped the bottles in the blue bin at the back door. I’d decided I’d rather have a restless sleep with a looming Curran conversation than talk about it now.
When I straightened, Deaglan was right behind me. His hands settled on my hips and my pulse zipped into a frenzy. “What are you doing?”
My belly felt as if it were bursting with colorful, sweet, candy-coated chocolates as my ass pressed against his hardness and his warm breath wafted across my ear.
“The conversation needs to happen, Eva.”
Deaglan was good at herding, I decided. Because he turned me around and herded me into the spot where the new fridge was going to go. He was slow and gentle about it, though, almost cautious.
My spine hit the wall.
Having Deaglan against me gave me mind-mush and I couldn’t think about anything except his mouth on mine.
Damn it, I wanted him to kiss me.
“I thought we were talking about my ex,” I managed to say.
“We are, except I’ve been thinking about fucking you all damn day, Eva.”
“But you’re only with a girl once,” I said.
“You mean fuck a girl?” he drawled.
“Yeah,” I said in a breathless whisper.
His head tilted, mouth inches from mine. “You’re a girl to break rules for.”
My chest tightened.
Push him away before he crushes the last fragment of resistance. Remember the feeling when he kicked you out of his place, Eva.
“Curran and I dated for a couple years,” I blurted, hoping to get him to back away.
“A couple years,” he said. “That’s more than dating.”
“We lived together a few months.” Five months and four days. “How did you find out about him?” Even if he managed to get into any of my social media, he’d never find a picture of me and Curran because Curran refused to have any pictures of himself on social media. He said it invaded his privacy.
“Evan,” he said.
I frowned. “Evan? You talked to Evan? Bartender Evan.” Evan knew about Curran because I’d freaked out in self-defense class when he came up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder.
“Yes. I asked him if he’d seen anyone suspicious watching you over the last week. He told me to ask you about your ex, Curran Carrick. I did some research. There is nothing on your ex before he moved to town and bought a shipping company seven years ago. Two years ago he gets charged with assault and thrown in jail for a year. No one has heard from him since he was released.” He placed his finger under my chin and tipped my head up. “Why did Evan tell me to look into him, Eva?”
I bit my lower lip. “He was in jail because of me,” I whispered. “When I moved out of his place, he didn’t like it. I ended up in the hospital and he ended up in jail.”
I’d blamed myself for a long time afterward. I was a nurse and I’d seen abuse victims. I treated women who had been abused, held them while they cried and I led them to the right people to help them.
But I’d stayed with Curran. At least, for a while. I kept thinking the little things weren’t anything. Until the little things became big things and it was too late. At least, I felt as if it was too late.
Deaglan’s expression turned volatile. Anger rippled off him in waves and every muscle flexed with tension. His eyes were like a violent thunderstorm of greens, yellows, and specks of black, all crashing into one another.
A tremor went through me and it wasn’t a good tremor.
“Christ, Eva.” He shoved away from me, spun on his heel and stormed out of the kitchen. I heard his booted feet on the hardwood floors until the front door slammed.
Deaglan reacted badly when he’d found out about my mugging, so I expected a similar reaction because I was getting that this was the type of guy he was. But it felt more than that. As if he took it personally.
I pushed off the wall and walked out onto the porch. Deaglan had his phone to his ear as he paced the front lawn with long, stiff strides. The casual swagger had vanished.
I sat on the swing, curling my legs underneath me and tightening the ball that was threatening to rip wide open.
“I want all of it,” he growled into the phone. “Fuck yeah. Those, too.” Pause. “Don’t care, Deck. Unseal it. I need to see it. Photos. Reports. Everything.” Another pause and he ran his hand through his hair. “He is mine, Deck. I need the bastard found.” He said something else I couldn’t hear, then shoved his phone into his back pocket and faced me.
Our eyes met across the yard and locked for a few seconds. Then he made his way toward me.
Up the three steps, then across the wooden porch to the swing.
He stopped in front of me and I had to crank my neck in order to keep eye contact. “The scar on the back of your head?”
My breath hitched. “Yeah,” I replied in a barely audible sound. I didn’t think he’d noticed that. It wasn’t noticeable to see, but you could feel the scar where the six sutures had been. “He… uh, struck me and I fell. My head hit the corner of the granite countertop on the way down.”
He inhaled a ragged breath before running his fingers through his hair again. “Fuck.”
I thought he might walk away, but Deaglan lowered onto the swing beside me.
He leaned forward so his forearms rested on his thighs, hands clasped, head bent. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I sighed. “Deaglan, it’s not something to bring up in idle conversation with a guy you slept with once.”
“I didn’t think we just had idle conversations, Eva.” He kept his voice soft.
I guess we hadn’t, but still, it wasn’t easy to talk about with anyone, let alone a guy I barely knew. “It’s been two years since I’ve seen or heard from him. It’s a part of my life I’m not proud of and he’s out of my life.”
His hands clasped and unclasped, head still bent, eyes on the porch planks. “The women’s center.”
I nodded.
He lifted his head and leaned back in the swing. His weight shifted and sent the swing into a soft lull back and forth.
He was silent and so was I for several minutes, and then, “Tomorrow, we’ll install an alarm here, too. I need to make sure you’re safe, Eva.”
I didn’t argue. I just accepted it, and besides, after Vic installed the other alarm, I felt safer, and feeling safe was huge.
“I need to know all of it.” His hands rubbed up and down his thighs. “I don’t like being in the dark, but I don’t expect you to tell me. So I’m not going to ask that of you. But I have to know what he did and I asked Deck to get that for me.”
“Why? Why do you need to know, Deaglan?” I wasn’t comfortable with
him seeing photos of what Curran had done to me. Maybe it was embarrassment or that I didn’t want him to see me weak and broken.
He remained silent. Then his feet flattened on the porch as he steadied the swing and peered at me. “Do I scare you, Eva?”
My breath hitched. “No.” And I meant it. Deaglan may be scary, but never once had I been scared that he’d physically harm me. Even when he was angry when I told him about Curran, he walked out of the kitchen. God, he’d found me at the hospital as soon as he saw the security footage of me being mugged.
“I’d never hurt you. I know you might not get that yet, but hurting a woman….” He ran his fingers through his hair and inhaled a ragged breath. “Babe, if you’re ever scared of me, I need you to tell me.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
He cupped my chin, thumb lightly grazing my lower lip. “Fuckin’ rare.”
The swing swayed back and forth again, and I leaned against the backrest. The sun was setting behind the large oak tree in the front yard and it cast an orangey haze over the sky.
We sat next to one another without touching and watched the sun go down in silence. Just the creak of the swing as it rocked and the rustle of the leaves in the trees filling the air around us.
There was comfort in the silence. Comfort in that he was here with me.
And I wanted this moment to last a really, really long time.
“He helped you pick out a fridge?” Ally said, two days later after work while we were in the locker room.
“And an oven.”
“Fuck me. I’ve been trying to get you to buy appliances for months. Did he fuck you in the showroom? Was that his strategy?”
I laughed. “God, no. We’re not sleeping together.” My phone vibrated and I glanced at the screen.
Deaglan: Tyler is in the drop off zone.
I hit the smiley face with the tongue out, and hit Send.
Deaglan was in super overprotective mode since he found out about Curran. Especially since no one had heard from or seen Curran Carrick since he got out of jail. But according to Deaglan, he still owned the shipping company.
Ally slammed her locker shut. “What did your dad say when he met him? What did you tell him? I bet he liked him.”
“Why do you say that?”
She shrugged, sitting on the bench while waiting for me to finish dressing. “No-bullshit type of guy. Tells it like it is. Complete opposite of Curran.” My dad and Curran didn’t have anything in common, and the two times they met, it was awkward. Dad thought Curran was too reserved and hiding something. Turns out he was. His personality. “Plus, he helped you pick out a fridge, and even if your dad didn’t like him before, he would after that.”
I shut my locker, grabbed my purse with the pearl beads on the front, and we headed out of the hospital. I told her about sitting on the porch having a beer, chatting about rugby, then bit the bullet and told her about Deaglan finding out about Curran.
“I don’t know why you didn’t tell him in the first place.”
“I slept with him and he kicked me out. I didn’t feel like spilling my guts about an asshole boyfriend I haven’t heard from in two years.”
“Does he still think the mugger isn’t a mugger?”
I nodded. “I have no clue how he’ll find him, though. And since he now knows about Curran, he’s sending someone to pick me up and drive me home. It’s silly when I’m literally a five-minute walk, but the guy is overly cautious. As soon as he tracks down Curran and this mugger guy, he’ll let it go.”
“And let you go?” Ally said. “I don’t know, Eva. Guys don’t go fridge shopping, install alarms, and have a beer with a girl’s dad when they aren’t interested. And he’s trying to keep you safe, so that’s good, too.”
I shrugged. I couldn’t figure Deaglan out, and it was probably better not to try because it made me think about him more, and thinking about him more made me like him more. And Deaglan Kane was off limits for more reasons than the fact that he lived in another country and didn’t do relationships.
“Eva?” I stopped at the automatic sliding doors as Greta hurried toward me. “A gentleman was looking for you earlier. Said he was a friend of yours.”
“Oh.” Who would be looking for me? Did one of Deaglan’s friends come by to check on me? Shit. It was probably that bodyguard, Luke, he wanted me to meet. “Did you get his name?”
She shook her head. “No, sorry. I asked, but then the phone rang and he left before I got the chance.”
I put my hand on her forearm. “Don’t worry about it. If he’s a friend, he’ll call or drop in again.”
“He was a nice-looking man, not as nice as the other one, though. The one with the tattoos and the faded, snug jeans.” She winked then turned back to the nurses’ station.
Ally smacked my arm. “Greta has the hots for your man.”
I lifted my eyes heavenward. “He’s not my man.”
“He’s totally into you. He showed up at a pub to take you home because he was worried about your safety. And he stayed the night on your couch. Your lumpy-as-shit couch that you need to dump and not take to your new house. He installed an alarm. And he’s looking into your shit-hole ex. Totally into you.”
We walked through the automatic sliding doors of the Emergency Room and Ally nudged me with her elbow as we both staggered to a stop.
“Tyler?” Ally whispered.
“My guess.”
But it wasn’t a guess, because Tyler looked every bit the commando guy as he stood leaning up against the front of a kickass, souped-up SUV, with his muscled, tattooed arms crossed over his chest clad in a navy T-shirt.
He wore jeans with a black leather belt, and combat boots. Unlike Deaglan, though, Tyler was blond, and when he lifted his head to look at us, he grinned, and it was friendly.
“Eva. Hey.” He pushed off the vehicle and walked toward us. Swagger check. Confidence check. Dangerous, not sure yet.
“Does he have any non-hot friends?” Ally leaned into me whispering, as she stared at the sexy commando.
So far no. “Maybe it’s a prerequisite to being his friend.”
Ally giggled.
Tyler held out his hand. “Tyler,” he said.
I shook his hand, and Ally did, too, while introducing herself. After a few niceties, Ally said goodbye and headed to the parking lot.
Tyler opened the door for me, and I slid into the seat. He jogged around the front and folded in.
“I guess you know where I live,” I said as he put the SUV in gear.
“Yeah. All the guys do.”
I frowned. “All the guys?”
“Yeah, who work at VUR.”
Right. “And what exactly does VUR do?”
He turned out of the hospital parking lot, then glanced at me grinning. “Hunt down the worst motherfuckers in the world.”
My eyes widened. “Oh.” I knew they did security of some kind, but I hadn’t expected that. “And how long have you and Deaglan been friends?”
“I don’t know about calling us friends. Fuckin’ guy can’t stay in one country long enough to be considered a friend. But we’ve known one another six, seven years. I know his cousin, who is a good friend of Deck’s.”
He turned onto my street because that’s how close I was to the hospital.
He glanced at me and smirked. “Whatever Deaglan had to do must have been important, otherwise he’d never let me pick you up.”
I frowned. “Why not?”
He grinned. “Because you’re smokin’ hot.”
I half-laughed. “Ah, thanks?”
He pulled into my driveway and shut off the car. “I’ll check out your place before I go,” Tyler said.
I shrugged. “Sure. But the alarm never went off. It would’ve said on my phone app.” And Deaglan’s.
He grinned. “Babe, an alarm is only as good as a man with skills. I have skills, and as good as I am, I know there are a few other guys in this world who also have skills. But I say a few, b
abe. Not many. Because I’m fuckin’ good at what I do.”
I laughed and got out of the car.
Tyler was playful and casual, but there was no question he had that same awareness about him as Deaglan. He didn’t just walk up to the door with me. He kept me shielded with his body as he scanned the area.
I unlocked the door and the beeping immediately sounded. I quickly punched in the code and the beeping stopped.
“Have at it.” I gestured to the tiny bungalow.
Tyler walked through the house, checking all the rooms and closets, before coming back out to the living room. “All clear,” he said. “Do you plan on going out? I can stay—”
I shook my head. “No. I just pulled a twelve-hour shift. Shower and then sleep for the next eight hours.”
He nodded and opened the front door. “Lock and load.” I raised my brows and he chuckled. “Lock the door and code in the alarm.”
I smiled. “Got it.”
When Tyler left, I locked the door, slid the chain across, and set the alarm. I showered, ate a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich, and then crawled into bed.
The tantalizing scent of Deaglan filtered into me and I thought I was imagining him until the mattress dipped and an arm slid around my waist from behind.
I jerked upright. “Deaglan?”
“Shh, go back to sleep, baby,” he drawled, and with one firm tug, he pulled me into his body so his length spooned mine. He wasn’t under the covers, except for his arm that was slung over my waist.
Deaglan was here. Not on the couch, but in my bed and holding me to him. God, it felt good. He felt good. More so because I’d woken up three times already with Curran’s image popping into my head like a freakin’ jack-in-the-box.
Talking about him two days ago with Deaglan had rolled that ball to the forefront of my mind.
I’d stayed with Ally for a month after I’d been released from the hospital with a broken arm, a concussion with sutures in my scalp, and my right eye swollen shut.
“You’re thinking,” Deaglan murmured.
