“Pierre,” Weston warned as he assisted Meredith out of the SUV. His sunglasses gave him the appearance of a much tougher guy, one you see on one of those crime shows.
“I believe my wife requested champagne, not pool hall discussions in the middle of the street.”
“Yes, sir, she did indeed.” Pierre shifted his eyes to me, a smile attempting to escape as his eyes widened. Leaning closer to Logan, “Damn, man. Where did you find her?”
“One-eight-hundred-babe. You old bastard, put your tongue back in your mouth.”
Nothing could have prepared me for the grandeur of the Forbes home. Deep mahogany furniture created a backdrop to the European feel of the space. Twelve-foot ceilings painted in Rembrandt settings, solid marble floor tiles laid in perfect alignment, making it hard to detect a seam. A giant crystal chandelier hung over a solid wood table in the center of the room and a large painting of Meredith and Weston hung on the wall to the left of the entry.
“Pierre, how close are we to serving? It’s been a long day, and Harper and Logan are flying back to Virginia tonight.” Meredith slipped out of her heels, leaving them haphazardly under the entry table, crossing the room and disappearing into the hallway. “And don’t think I didn’t notice you texting your friend Gregory on the elevator ride up.”
Logan drops his face to the floor, his shoulder sagging as he lets go of my hand. “Pierre, you fucking traitor.” Rolling up his sleeves, the silver of his watch reflecting the light from the chandelier. He stands in the center of the room, his back facing me, shaking his head as his hands finds his hips. I feel like an outsider, like I needed to turn around and leave the way I came.
Pierre returned with a tray full of glasses filled with champagne, his flip-flops and baseball shirt replaced with a jacket and dress shoes. Logan gave him a hard look, then took the tray from his hands and placed it on the wood table.
“You better not have used the good shit.” Logan tossed, an edge of frustration coating his tone. Pierre remained rooted where he stood, his head held high, although he avoided eye contact with either of us. I’ve never trusted anyone who couldn’t look me in the eye, and something told me the goosebumps on my arm were from more than the change in temperature in the room.
Meredith returns wearing a satin pantsuit and flats just as an odd tone sounded overhead. Logan and Meredith looked at one another, both wearing matching looks of disgust, as Pierre moved around me to the door.
“Be nice,” Meredith demands, pointing a finger in Logan’s face. Her once graceful demeanor has been replaced with the ferociousness of a provoked bear. Logan stands with his arms slightly outstretched, elevated above his waistline with his palms facing forward. His head is tipped to the side, raising his shoulders in a shrug, as if he were asking her, really?
“Meredith, darling.”
My eyes grow huge, I could swear the nasal voice behind me was Miss Mona with a bad head cold. Both Meredith and Logan don fake smiles, as the clicking of heels against the tile grew closer.
“I hear you have wonderful news to share with me.”
Refusing to turn around, too frightened to see if my suspicion was correct, Pierre hurried past me and into the hall to the left. Like a light switch, Meredith moved with the grace I was familiar with, grabbing Logan's outstretched arm and spinning him effortlessly as the pair glided past me to greet the owner of the voice.
“Jillian, you’ve arrived just in time as we were about to toast Logan’s return to the States.”
“Oh, I do love a reason for a glass of bubbly.”
Fur and pearls filled my peripheral vision, the smell of Chanel swarming my nose and making my eyes tear up. Usually, I loved the scent, but when the wearer appeared to bathe in it, the fragrance became offensive.
“Penelope and Kiki will be so disappointed they missed this.”
The owner of the fur and pearls doesn’t waste a second as she stops at the table, snatching a glass from the tray like a free gift at a trade show. Holding the glass in mid-air, her eyes land on mine. Platinum blonde hair tossed up in one of the most elaborate up-do’s I’ve ever seen, thick eyelashes, looking more like black chicken feathers, frame the surgically enhanced eyelids coated in sparkly eye shadow. Her cheeks are so severely hollow it looks as if she was sucking in her cheeks as she gives a man a blowjob. But it's her lips that make me look at her like a bad traffic accident; so full of silicone they look like duckbills.
“Oh,” she looks at me, scanning from my head to the shoes on my feet. “I wasn’t aware you were hiring more staff.”
“I’m not.” Meredith spoke with a edge to her voice, her rebuttal sitting on her lips, but Jillian was too quick.
“You should have said something. I could have given my agency a call, had them send someone—” Her judgy eyes scan mine once again, the chicken feathers rising with the motion of her brow.
“Less ordinary over.”
I learned a long time ago how to deal with people like Jillian, you toss their venom back in their face and make them enjoy the taste. Stepping forward, my hand outstretched, and turning up the twang in my normal southern drawl.
“I am so sorry. My momma would tan my britches right good if she found out I’d forgotten to pack my manners. I’m Harper, from Virginia. Miss Meredith invited me to the big city to welcome her baby boy back home from the service.” Not waiting for her to offer her hand, I took the glass of champagne from her fingers and slid my hand in its place, shaking so hard I wouldn’t be surprised if I loosened a few fillings.
“It’s a pleasure to meet ya.”
Her eyes grew wide as the earrings dangling from her ears slapped against her neck from the force of my handshake.
“You know, my aunt Tilly has a housecoat just like yours. Bought it on sale at the five and dime by her house. My uncle Cecil offered to shoot her a raccoon to make her matching slippers, but she was too a feared one of them animal folks would throw paint on her like the lady on the television. I bet you wear yours around the house too, keepin’ the chill off your old bones and all.”
Jillian pulls her hand from mine with such force I had to take a step forward. “Meredith, I'm sorry, but I have an appointment,” flexing her fingers, she wore a look on her face as if she had swallowed a fly. “Somewhere else. I will call you when—” She didn’t finish her sentence, instead took one final look at me and pushed past in determined strides, not stopping until she reached the door.
When the wooden door slammed hard enough to rattle the crystals above, Meredith and Logan once again exchanged a look.
“She stays, Logan. I don’t care how much you have to beg, she is staying.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Logan
“I’m sorry, Violet, I have to take this.”
Excusing myself from my realtor’s office where I’d been waiting for Harper for nearly an hour, hoping this call was her letting me know she was on her way. She had been too busy to stop and visit with me when I swung by her shop earlier. I wanted to stay and help, but knew my presence would be more of a hinder than help.
Glancing at my screen, my heart plummets as the digits were not that of my Harper. This particular number had called me a number of times, but I had chosen to ignore it until now.
“Hello?”
“May I speak with Lieutenant Forbes, please?”
“This is Lieutenant Forbes.”
“Lieutenant, this is HM1 Gleason, one of the corpsmen at the branch clinic in Norfolk. How are you today, sir?”
Leaning my back against the brick of the building, my fingers find purchase in the thick hair at the top of my head. I suspect my old CO would have called my new command, telling my new Captain how I went behind his back and got my way. What I didn’t suspect was a call this early into my leave.
“I'm all right, Gleason. But I have a feeling you're about to fuck that up.”
“Sorry, sir. I’ve been instructed by Captain Vale to have you report to his office no later than thirteen hun
dred Monday afternoon.”
“Let me guess, Gleason. You’re short staffed and need my skills?”
“Well—”
“It was rhetorical, Gleason. I’ll be in his office first thing Monday morning.”
Not bothering to bid him farewell, I take my chances on the rumor mill spreading the word I was a cranky bastard. Every command had one, usually they are composed of people with too goddamn much time on their hands.
Shoving my phone in my pocket, I glance over in time to see my Harper pulling into the spot three over from mine. I wasn’t a fan of the condition her truck was in, and while it ran decently, I would have preferred she be in something with a few more safety features.
Harper hadn’t noticed me standing against the wall. Having pulled her sun visor down to check her face and hair, my inner caveman fist pumping at how she cared enough to want to impress me. Which was a wasted effort, I already believed she was the most beautiful woman I knew.
Last night as we sat down to dinner, my father explained the strange woman who had bounced in and looked at Harper as if she was the hired help. Jillian Stratton-VonLeure was a card-carrying member of the third wives club. She and her friends made marrying well an art form.
Her first husband, Wesley Stratton, was a fifth generation hotelier with more money than brains and an eye for a short skirt and even shorter attention span. He met and married her in less than a week during a meeting to purchase a hotel in Las Vegas, after a nasty divorce from his second wife, which left him a large settlement. Jillian worked as a cocktail waitress and managed to spill a drink in Wesley’s lap. What started out as lust at first sight, turned into a drunken wedding with no prenup, which lasted five years and produced two daughters, their paternity questioned on numerous occasions.
Three months later, while shopping at an expensive store in London, Jillian met husband number two. Philipp VonLeure, an Indy car driver whose father was French and his mother of royal blood to the kingdom of Dubai. Philip's first wife, from an arranged marriage, failed to produce an heir, therefore nullifying its validity. Wife number two, a cousin to wife number one, had disappeared three days after the papers were signed, never to be heard from again.
Phillip also fell for the smoke screen Jillian had crafted in hopes of finding a new husband. While the royal family objected to the union, Phillip was killed in a fiery crash three months after the wedding, leaving Jillian to inherit all of his sizable assets. Now she is on a mission to marry off her two daughters, Penelope and Kiki, to the most eligible and lucrative bachelors she could find. I currently held the number one spot on the list.
Jillian traded in her moral compass to Satan himself to ensure she and her daughters would continue to live in the lifestyle they had become accustomed to. And where she may be ruthless, she isn’t easily deterred. She wouldn’t stop the pursuit of me until I had taken a bride or she found someone to surpass the allure of me.
Harper fell asleep on the flight back to Virginia. I couldn’t help myself as I watched the rise and fall of her chest. The way her hair cascaded along her shoulder blade, curling around the swell of her breast, directing my attention, and my cock, to a place I was planning to visit soon.
“Hey. Sorry, I’m late.”
Pushing a cluster of hair back behind her ear, giving me a glimpse at the silver crescent shaped scar on the edge of her chin. I’d ask her another time how she got it.
“You’re right on time.”
Harper's car door creaks as she opens it, the smell of her perfume hitting me as I reach in to take her hand. I love the way her skin feels against mine, soft and warm, the way a woman should.
“Your truck is way past its prime.”
A look of pain flashes along her features, eyes slanted in an angry grimace and I could feel the hurt flowing off of her. With Jillian getting her riled up last night and the gentle way she allowed me to explain to her how I arrived in Virginia, I didn’t want to risk crossing the line any further and creating a backlash.
“You, however, are scrumptious.”
Burying my face in the crook of her neck, I nip not so gently at the sweet skin there. I know I’ve distracted her as she shivers in my arms, a throaty moan escaping her lips.
“Logan.”
She warns half-heartedly, a sigh of pleasure leaving her lips. Her nails gently scraping the skin at the back of my neck, sending jolts of pleasure to my cock. I want nothing more than to shove her back into the cab of her truck, spread her open and devour her. Instead, I use the head on my shoulders and push her way from my raging hard-on.
“Come on, before I do something that will get me arrested.”
As we walk hand-in-hand into the office, she leans into me, her head resting against my shoulder just as she did last night on the plane. I want this—her—to be right where she is, clinging to me as much as I am to her.
“I told the realtor we had time for two maybe three houses today.”
“You know, you could have done this by yourself, chosen an apartment without my input.”
Pulling her to a stop, lines forming on her forehead in confusion, the afternoon sun streaking her hair with highlights.
“Need I remind you of the conversation we had last night?”
Pulling her closer, my eyes flash to the pink of her lips, recalling how incredible they tasted, how supple they felt.
“We’re not looking for an apartment. If I wanted to live like a frat boy, I would go back to college, or stay in the military. We are looking for a home. One with a spectacular backyard to have our friends over, plenty of bedrooms for us to christen, and one you and I can someday make our own.”
Harper smiled but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. She was holding back, too afraid to let out whatever it was inside her head keeping her guarded.
“Now, as I explained in the car, this particular home is five bedrooms and four bathrooms, with a mother-in-law suite on the first floor.”
Violet Cutter, the realtor I had chosen, already had dollar signs dancing in her eyes. My mother proposed I let Josh handle this, but I wanted Harper with me when I made the final decision.
“The three-car garage was recently updated with additional storage for a motorcycle, and the schools are triple A rated.”
Harper stood looking at the kitchen with its dark, dated cabinets and appliances which looked to have been installed by a fourth grader from that triple A school down the street.
“It’s a gated community, with twenty-four-hour circulating security.”
Violet may have started planning how she would spend the nearly seventy thousand dollars she stood to make in commission from this house. However, she was about to learn what is was to negotiate with a Forbes. Pulling out my phone, I opened the app Austin, Chase’s brother, sent me. It was a copy of one we used all the time in combat. Entering the address of the house, I waited less than a minute for the intel to flash across the screen.
“Gates keep honest people in. With seventeen break-ins this year and two home invasions, it kept the criminals in as well.”
Harper spun around, her lips ready to argue what I already knew was on her mind. I held my hand out to her, needing her to understand I had every intention of protecting her every single day of her life. Violet ducked her head, her years of being a seasoned professional teaching her she had met her match.
The next house sat not far from the water in yet another gated community. Violet showed us the game room and hidden area where our children could play, but just like the first, the number of reported crimes was high. This one had a governing board of directors to decide what could and couldn’t be allowed inside the metal barriers.
Violet had one last house, the most expensive of the three and not in a gated community. Harper held my hand tightly as we maneuvered along the streets of Chesapeake. As we turned onto the main road, traffic was at a standstill, and I could see red lights flashing in the distance.
“Here, turn right,” Harper spoke from my left, squeezing
our clasped hands. “I know a side street where we can avoid the accident.”
She and Violet exchanged ideas on direction and agreed we could get to the next house by taking her detour.
“I had a friend in high school who lived over here.” A pleasant memory dances in her head as the emotions create a smile on her lips. “Her neighbor had horses, and they would come to her fence and let us pet them.”
The two-lane, tree-lined road she told me to take was something out of a Southern magazine, with the Spanish moss draping the maple trees, the thick, green foliage snuggled up to the trunks of the tree. Thick, black asphalt splits the trees and allows us to get closer to our destination.
“Logan?”
Pulling my eyes from the road, the sound of my name crosses my ears as if a wish on the wings of angels. Harper has her index finger tapping on the side window, her eyes full of excitement.
“It’s an open house, not far from where my friend lived.” She doesn’t have to ask me, I can see it in her eyes. Turning my signal on, I see Violet take a deep breath and look at her watch, but I could give two shits if this is an inconvenience to her.
The road is twisting like a snake back into the thick woods, the further we get into the dark green thicket, the more excited Harper becomes.
“There was so much empty land around her house, you couldn’t see her neighbor unless you walked a half mile.”
Sure enough, thirty-feet later the forest opened up, and the most beautiful home came into view.
Red and white balloons danced in the wind above an open house sign. The large black arrow pointed to the house that had stolen Harper's breath away. The same maple trees that guided us here continued up the drive, stopping just shy of the double garage. Sandstone covered the exterior, with two chimneys pointing to the heavens from the back side of the house. Clearing the trees, a circular drive showcased the grandeur of the front entry and the edge of what looked to be a pond or lake at the side of the property.
Operation SEAL: Book Two Trident Brotherhood Series Page 24
