by Lexi Blake
“Are you sure about the coffee?” Erin’s husband walked in behind her. Theo Taggart was technically the youngest of the four Taggart brothers, but only by a few minutes. His twin, Case, had been born first, a state that led to Theo being called the tiniest of the Tags. Looking at the six-foot-three-inch tree of a man, it was hard to think of him as tiny.
Erin’s right brow climbed over her eyes. “Are you serious? You know I’ve done this before and you haven’t. One cup a day isn’t going to kill me. You might know that if you’d been around the first time.”
His hands came up. “Peace, woman. You’re a beast without a little caffeine. Hey, Owen. How’s it going?”
Theo held a hand out and Owen forced himself to shake it. It was odd to stand in front of the man he’d betrayed. He knew deep down that he didn’t deserve to shake the man’s hand, but it was expected of him.
Erin was pouring a cup of coffee. “From what I hear it’s going pretty good since Ezra told me you took the target home last night. She lives on this floor, right? Should Tucker be coming and going like he lives here? Are you supposed to know each other?”
“She can’t see us from here and Tucker takes the stairs,” Robert explained. “Oh, he whines and complains about it, but he does it. Wait until he starts talking about his quads.”
Was Theo working on something else or was he really here to check up on him? Did they already think he was mucking things up? “She’s got a tag on her purse and her phone,” Owen explained. “I’ve also placed a device on her front door that lets us know when she’s entering or exiting.”
Robert held up a tablet as the thing chimed. “Like now. What’s up with the cops?”
Erin turned to him. “She called the cops? What did you do?”
Yes, there was the judgment he always expected. It wasn’t like she didn’t have the right to it. “I didn’t do anything. At least not anything she didn’t want me to do.”
“Ah, that’s why you want me to check into the neighbor,” Robert said, his eyes on the tablet. “I saw him hanging around. He didn’t look happy to see you going into her apartment after you went to the café. That security camera is perfectly placed. Sasha did an excellent job with that. I think he actually does better work drunk off his ass. Dude, those cops are getting an earful. Your girl is not happy.”
He moved around so he could see the image on the tablet. Becca was still in her robe and she was pointing to her left, toward Carter’s apartment, her face angry as hell. At least she was blaming the proper person.
Robert had fed the security footage through all their systems so they would be able to know when it was and wasn’t safe to move around the building. Becca didn’t know it, but her every move was being monitored.
It made him feel a little sick to think about how he’d tagged her phone while she’d been sleeping. He’d rolled out of the bed he’d taken her in again and again, only to sneak to her purse and make sure they could keep track of her, stealing every vestige of her privacy because he’d also planted some bugs so they could listen in.
“You’re doing it as much for her as for the rest of us,” Theo said solemnly, as though he could read minds.
Or he was so damn transparent anyone could tell what he was thinking. “I’m not sure she would agree.”
“She will when we keep her from falling into Levi Green’s clutches. I think he sent us here to do his dirty work. He’s trying to find leverage to make her work for him, but we’re in Canada and he has to be careful. If she’d been in Boston, he wouldn’t have bothered with us at all,” Erin said with a wrinkle of her freckled nose. “I hate that asshole. I’ve been thinking about numerous ways Kay and I could mess him up. I think he requires female justice.”
Theo frowned. “That you will give up. I don’t care that you need a little violence in your life. You can kill again after you give birth, and that is a hard damn limit for me, baby. I can be indulgent, but I can also find a way to very gently make it so you can’t sit for a week.”
“Promises, promises,” Erin tossed back at her husband with a wink. “Fine. No bloody vengeance until the miracle baby arrives.”
The door came open and Tucker hustled in, carrying two brown bags. “Timmys for everyone.” He looked up at Owen. “Well, not you. I thought you would be eating with the doc. Did she throw you out?”
Before he could reply, Erin was taking the bag from Tucker. “I’m starving. Throwing up all morning makes me hungry. Did you get the sour cream glazed donut holes?”
Tucker shook his head. “Nope. They’re called Timbits, and if you don’t call them that they…well, they’re Canadians. They just smile and correct you.”
“This is a strange land, my friend,” Erin said, but her eyes lit on the bag of donuts. “Theo, you going to explain why we’re here or are we waiting for Ezra to show up?”
“I was going to wait until we had a proper meeting.” Theo grabbed a cup for coffee for himself. “My brother always does this kind of thing in a room with a projector and everyone sits around in the half dark and there’s a bunch of file folders.”
Erin’s eyes rolled. “There’s a reason he does that. Your brother sleeps through most of those meetings. He says it’s about being high tech, but if you listen closely, you can hear him snoring in time to the hum of the projector. Truly, it’s one of his great talents.”
“He sleeps? But he’s got his eyes open,” Theo pointed out.
“Another one of his talents.” Erin turned to them. “We’ve tracked Levi here and we think he recently had a meeting with Paul Huisman. Hutch found some traffic cam footage of Huisman being picked up in a limo. No ID on Green, but we did catch one of his CIA lackeys on film. Unless Donnie Lennox has taken a second job as a limo driver here in Toronto, which I doubt since he’s still on the Agency’s payroll.”
Fuck all. “She said something scared her yesterday. She said someone was in her building when she was alone, and she felt like whoever it was he was stalking her.”
Tucker sighed and set down his breakfast sandwich. “Well, we knew he was planning something.”
“I’ll have Jax pull CCTV from around the building. He can get it to Hutch for facial recognition,” Robert said, picking up his mobile and starting to text. “Dante can get the internal feed. Was she in her office when it happened? He said there’s a camera right outside her door and another one in the hallway.”
“Yes, she was going home. The lights went out.” When she’d told him the whole story, she’d been lying in his arms. She’d been relaxed and seemingly happy. He’d managed to get that haunted look out of her eyes. “I want to know who went up those lifts or who took the stairs up to her floor right before five p.m.”
“We’ll get it done,” Robert promised.
He couldn’t help but turn to Theo and Erin. “Is that all? Because that seems like something you could have told us over the phone.”
That brow of Erin’s rose again, but Theo was waving a hand as though he could hold off his wife’s wrath.
“You know why he’s asking. He thinks we’re here to monitor him,” Theo explained in a patient tone. “He thinks Big Tag is pissed because he took over the op.”
Erin’s smile was entirely predatory. “He is pissed.”
Theo sighed. “And he also thinks Owen can handle this.” He turned Owen’s way. “Did you make a call in the field?”
He felt like he would never stop explaining this. “She wasn’t going to buy what we were selling, man. If I’d walked away from her, she wouldn’t have talked to me again. She’s got a very narrow focus. Right now, I’m her focus. As a friend, she would have easily prioritized work over me and everything else.”
“All right,” Theo said simply. “This should always have been your op. My brother overrode Ezra because he’s a stubborn bastard. Erin and I are here for different reasons. We’re following up on a lead.”
“A lead? On this case?” Why hadn’t he been informed?
Theo’s eyes hooded, and
Owen knew there wouldn’t be a lot of information forthcoming. “I’m following up on something else. I’ve got some intel about Dr. McDonald’s former associates. I’m meeting a man who thinks he can get us in touch with someone who can give us new information. He wouldn’t come to the States. It was here or Mexico City.”
“Spicy foods don’t agree with me right now,” Erin said before popping one of the sweet treats in her mouth.
Theo had a wholly masculine look of self-satisfaction on his face as he put a hand on his wife’s barely there baby bump. “Don’t worry about us. This is a last-minute thing and Erin and I decided to make a mini-vacation out of it. TJ is currently showing his cousin, Heath, the ropes. Case thinks he’s super dad now. He has no idea how hard taking care of an infant and a toddler is going to be. Good luck with that. Anyway, we’re going to follow up on this lead and stay out of your hair. We’ll be at the Shangri-La for a couple of days if you need us.”
“I’m going to enjoy it,” Erin said, a sparkle in her eyes. “The last time we stayed at a luxury hotel, I got pregnant. I can’t get more pregnant, but I can order all the room service since it’s on Big Tag’s dime.”
“You can’t be sure you got pregnant at any one time unless that was the only time you had sex,” Tucker pointed out. “It’s a myth that women can tell.”
He expected Erin to argue, but a secretive smile transformed her normally tough expression into something infinitely feminine. “I know when this one was conceived. I know it in my bones. We stayed at the Joule downtown for our anniversary. We were going to try to get the bridal suite, but someone had taken it. I know it sounds insane, but I could feel something coming from that room.” She shook it off. “It was weird, but I’ve never had such crazy sex as we had that night. Theo was on, if you know what I mean.”
Theo grinned, obviously used to his wife’s oversharing. “I ran down to grab a couple of bottles of water and ran into this dude in all white. He told me he hoped I liked little girls. At the time I kind of thought I should call security, but now I think…well, there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio and all that.”
Erin snorted. “Don’t think he came up with that himself. When we told Jesse and Phoebe the story, Jesse thought we’d had too much to drink and Phoebe merely pointed out that we don’t know everything. Still, we thought TJ was a miracle. I wasn’t supposed to be able to get pregnant again and here I am. I think this one is a girl and I’m naming her Devon. I don’t know why, but that’s this kiddo’s name.”
Theo’s hand tightened around her waist. “I thought we weren’t talking about names until…”
She turned in his arms, her hands coming up to cup his face. “It’s fine, babe. This one is sticking. I don’t know how or why I know it, and if Tucker says one damn thing about feminine intuition being a myth, I’m going to make his balls a myth. It’s fine this time. We’re good, baby girl and me, and we’re going to stay that way.”
Theo leaned in and kissed his wife.
“Feminine intuition is a beautiful thing,” Tucker said with a nod.
He was a smart man.
“All right, then.” Robert looked like he was definitely ready to move on to more professional matters. “How did things go last night?” He winced a little. “I do not need a rundown of the actual act. I saw enough of that last night on the island.”
Erin groaned. “He’s got a one-track mind, and he’s prissy about sanitary food practices. But he’s got a point. You’re here awfully early for a man who had a good night. You playing hard to get?”
He felt his face flush. “It went fine.”
Tucker held up a hand. “I know what that means. Fine means not fine. Ever. Which makes me wonder why we have the word at all.”
Robert stood, crossing his arms over his chest. “What went wrong, Owen?”
“Not wrong, precisely.” He didn’t want to have this conversation. He wanted to write it up in his daily report and then not talk about it at all. Subject enjoyed coitus and then wanted to see if she would enjoy it with someone else. Fuck. “She’s got a date.”
Erin’s eyes went wide and then she was stifling a laugh. “She blew you off.”
If he never heard that phrase again it would be too soon. “We’ve agreed to keep things casual. She’s been out of the dating game for a while and she wants to see what’s out there. That’s all.”
Robert seemed to consider the problem. “Okay. We need to figure out how to change her mind.”
“I don’t think I can,” he admitted. “I promised her that we could see each other and have a sexual relationship without strings. When she’s with me, we’re together, and when she’s not, we’re free to pursue whatever we like. I didn’t know how else to make her comfortable.”
Erin sighed and kissed her husband again. “This one is all yours, babe. If anyone knows how to deal with a skittish chick, it’s you. Take Owen to your man teat and let him suckle at the fount of your knowledge.”
“You are in so much trouble,” Theo whispered to her before giving her arse a nice smack as she picked up the bag of Timbits and strode toward the bedroom. “Don’t think I’ll forget that, She-an.”
She laughed as she walked away.
“She-an?” Tucker asked.
“She and Ian.” Theo was shaking his head but there was a smile on his face. “It’s what I call her when her resemblance to my brother becomes creepy. I apparently have a type. Some women marry younger versions of their father. Same with men and their moms. I married the feminine equivalent of my oldest brother. Why couldn’t I have gotten She-Sean? At least she would have cooked.”
“I heard that, Taggart,” she yelled from the bedroom.
Theo didn’t seem phased. “But she’s right about me understanding skittish women. Unfortunately, you don’t have a couple of years to wear your stubborn chick down. Dr. Walsh went through a divorce, right?”
“Yes. He cheated on her.” He’d considered this. “It’s why I’m playing it cool. I’ll let her come to me next time.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, my man,” Theo said, taking a seat at the kitchen table. “Taking a step back could make it obvious to her that you’re serious about compartmentalizing. Maybe if you had all the time in the world that would work, but the clock is ticking here. Especially with Green in town. You need to up your game. So did you start a completely casual relationship with her?”
“I started a part-time D/s relationship with her.”
A wolfish grin lit Theo’s face. “And the parameters were?”
He was starting to see this in a different light. “When we’re together, we’re together. We didn’t put limits on it or say when we would or wouldn’t see each other. We merely said that when we wanted to, we would see each other and then she was mine until we ended the session.”
“So a session could start at any time,” Theo mused. “How did she respond to you topping her?”
A vision of her leaning over that couch and offering him everything he wanted echoed in his brain, and he wished he hadn’t gotten out of bed at all. He could still be there with her tangled around him. He could have fucked her again and maybe she would have forgotten all about the lawyer. “She’s sexually submissive and she’s not ashamed of it. I don’t know that she ever considered a relationship like this before, but she’s not opposed. She’s eager to experiment.”
“Excellent. Then this is all about ensuring you have the opportunity to help her experiment,” Theo said. “What do we know about her date?”
“It’s a blind date,” he explained. “She was set up by a friend of hers. I’ll be honest, I expected her to cancel it this morning. I meant to convince her to spend the day with me instead, but that prick showed up and I walked out because that note of hers was staring me in the face. I found a note this morning on the bar. It had all the information for her date written on it.”
“It bothered you?” Theo asked.
“It would bug me,” Tucker said, pulling out a
chair and taking a seat. He unwrapped his breakfast sandwich.
Owen rarely ate breakfast. He wasn’t sure why. It didn’t intrigue him, but this morning he’d gotten two croissants because he’d wanted to share them with her.
“I don’t know why.” Robert completed the circle, relaxing back into his chair again. “Your dates literally have men lined up, Tuck. Like she has to ask you to leave because her next appointment is there and she needs to clean up.”
“I wasn’t talking about hookers,” Tucker replied, though he seemed to talk about them an awful lot. “I was saying if a lady I was interested in basically kicked me out because she had some other dude coming over, I would be…hurt. Sorry. I had to think about that for a minute. If one of the other Tags had been here, I would have said something more manly like I would have been pissed or jealous AF. No. I wouldn’t have said AF. That’s probably hipster or something. What does Big Tag have against hipsters?”
The youngest of the Tags ignored Tucker. “Are you already in deep with this woman?”
Was he? He liked the hell out of her. He wanted her. He wasn’t sure he was capable of anything beyond that. “I enjoyed my time with her. I like the thought of topping her on a regular basis. She’s smart and sexy as hell.”
“See, that would be AH. Like why is as hell okay but AF isn’t?” Tucker mused. “The last time I used the phrase Big Tag slapped me upside the head and told me I wasn’t twelve. I don’t think twelve-year-olds are allowed to say fuck. Do you think that’s why they use AF?”
“Eat your breakfast or I’ll send you back to Ezra’s,” Robert promised.
“You know you’re going to walk away at the end of this, right?” Theo seemed very capable of ignoring Tucker’s antics.
He nodded. “Of course, I am. I’m either going wherever we go next or I’ll go home.”
He wasn’t sure where home was. When all of this was over, would he end up back at The Garden, working and watching as Nick and Hayley and Damon and Penny grew their families? Would he be the weird “uncle” to Brody and Stephanie’s son? Would they always watch him, waiting to see if he would betray them again?
