“Dude, slow the fuck down. You aren’t even engaged to this woman. Can you imagine moving him into your house and then having him walk in on you when you’re trying to fuck her?”
He was right. That would probably be too much for our relationship. Still, I was going to ask her to move in with me as soon as she had her plans with her dad settled.
“You’re right, but I’m telling you man. She’s the one.”
“Yeah, I know. Another one bites the dust. Just do me a favor and let me tell Lola,” he grinned.
“For you, I’ll let you tell the whole fucking team.”
He rolled his eyes and muttered something about me being pussy whipped as he walked out the door. I didn’t give a shit. I was happier than I had ever been.
✯✯✯✯✯
I pulled up to her house at 7:55 the next morning with donuts and coffee. I wasn’t sure if they had eaten yet, but I didn’t want to show up empty handed. Back in my hometown, everyone always kept a box of Entenmann’s around in case anyone stopped by for a visit. It was just ingrained in me to be prepared with donuts. The coffee was really for me. I needed it to stay awake today. I was so excited about the idea of asking her to move in with me that I had hardly slept at all. I actually got up around one in the morning to start making space for her in my closet.
Walking up to her porch, I smiled as she stepped out wringing her hands together. I thought it was cute how nervous she was, more nervous than I was. Whatever happened with her dad, I wanted him to like me, but she would be mine no matter what he thought.
“Good morning. You okay?” I asked, squinting against the bright sun.
“I’m good. Everything’s good. I’m just waiting for my dad to come downstairs. He’s been up there ‘getting ready’ for a half hour now. I’m not sure if he’s going to come down with flowers or a gun. It’s most likely a gun since he’ll probably want to intimidate you.”
“Claire, relax. I’m not worried about meeting your dad. I’m sure he’s a great guy and if he wants to shove a gun in my face to try and intimidate me, that’s fine too. As long as it isn’t loaded.”
She relaxed a little and pulled me inside where her dad had just walked into the kitchen. Holding my hand out, I walked over to him and introduced myself.
“Sir, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Derek.”
He shook my hand and eyed me speculatively. “Harry. It’s nice to meet you. Claire hasn’t told me anything about you, but Lucy, my other daughter, has said quite a bit.”
“All good, I hope.” I chuckled and shoved my hands in my pockets when he just glared at me.
“How about we take a walk?” It wasn’t a question and he grabbed one of the coffees I brought as he walked out the door. I grabbed one also and followed him out onto the porch. He walked out toward the chicken coop and stopped by the fencing. “Sorry about that. I just didn’t want her to follow us out here.”
I nodded, not sure where he was going with this. He turned to me and ran a hand over his face.
“Claire told me that we met one night when I wasn’t quite myself. She said that I pulled a gun on you.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Sorry about that. Most nights, I’m just not…”
“You don’t have to explain. I understand. Claire has told me all about it. She’s pretty torn up over you wanting to make plans to go to a home.”
“I know this is going to be hard for her, but it has to happen soon. There are too many days where I’m only lucid in the morning. I can’t ask my girls to give up any more of their lives to care for me. It’s just not fair to them.”
I stood silently, not sure if there was anything I could say that would make him feel better about the whole situation. I happened to agree with him. If it were me, I wouldn’t want my loved ones giving up so much of their lives to care for me.
“What’s going on with you and Claire?”
“No bullshit?”
“No bullshit.”
“I love your daughter. She’s mine and I don’t care how long it takes me, I’m going to prove to her that I’m the one for her. I don’t think she believes in herself enough yet to figure out that I’m not going anywhere, but I’ll do anything to make her see herself the way I see her. This is going to sound insensitive, but when she told me that you were going to discuss your options this weekend, the first thing I thought of was that I wanted to ask her to move in with me so that she wasn’t lonely. I know this is going to be hard on her and I don’t want her here by herself and moping around the house. I want her to come to me for comfort and I want to show her that she doesn’t have to do this shit alone anymore.”
“And what about her job? Her future? Is she just supposed to marry you and play the good housewife?”
“If she wants to, but I don’t see Claire ever being a housewife.” It popped out without a second thought and I realized in that moment that I did intend to make her my wife one day. “If she wants to keep the farm going, that’s fine with me. If she wants to stay at the library, which wouldn’t surprise me, that’s fine also. She can go back to school or whatever it is that will make her happy.”
“Just like that.”
“Just like that. I know it’s probably hard to believe because we haven’t been together that long, but she caught me right away. We had a rocky start, but it just made it that much better to fight for.”
He raised an eyebrow at me and shook his head slightly. “Son, I know I told you no bullshit, but that was one sappy ass answer. Let’s not ever speak of this conversation again. Understand me?”
I would have started laughing if it weren’t for the serious expression on his face. He said no bullshit and that’s what I gave him, because if I couldn’t tell her father how I felt, I didn’t deserve to have her. He needed to know exactly how much I wanted her before he lost all touch with reality and there was no way I would let him slip away without knowing his daughter would be cared for.
✯✯✯✯✯
I was late getting back to Reed Security after my talk with Harry. I didn’t want to rush out of there after I told him how much his daughter meant to me, so I stuck around until Claire had to get back out and get to work. I pulled into Reed Security and swore when I remembered that Cap was having a meeting this morning and it had started a half hour ago. I hurried inside and headed straight to the conference room, only then hearing my phone chime with incoming text messages. Based on the number of chimes, quite a few people had been trying to get ahold of me.
“Morning, Sunshine,” Cap said with a scowl as I entered. Everyone else was smirking at me, obviously getting that I wasn’t late because I slept in.
“Sorry,” I said as I took my seat.
“No problem. We were just going over assignments and since you felt that it wasn’t important to be here on time, your team gets the shit assignment.”
I flipped him off. Yeah, he was technically my boss, but I also owned part of this company. I’d take the shit assignment though, because it’s what any of us would have to do if we were late. I wasn’t going to pull rank to show the others up.
“Thanks, Loverboy.” Lola scowled at me from across the table, but I could see the way her lips were trying not to flicker up into a smile. She had my back no matter what.
“Anything for you, Brave.” She hated the name Brave, but we all called her that from time to time. Her last name, Pruitt, meant Brave and it perfectly described her best quality. Still, she didn’t like it, so instead of it being a common nickname, we used it when we wanted to piss her off.
She flipped me off and we listened as Cap went over the details of our next assignment. We were being hired to watch over a woman and her two kids before the woman testified against her husband in court. He was some high profile New York attorney and she had already had multiple threats made against her. She was scheduled to appear in court next week.
“Right now, she’s under police protection. You three, pack your bags. You’re taking a one o’clock fli
ght to New York and you’ll pick her up at the station. From there, you’ll be taking her and her sons to a secure hotel until the trial. Lola, she’s not the most trusting of men right now, so you’ll be her close protection agent. Derek, you know the drill. If it looks like this is bigger than we thought, let me know and we’ll send in another team.”
I nodded and picked up the file. If we were going to make our flight, we had to head out soon. “Let’s meet back here in an hour,” I said to Pappy and Lola.
“I’ll have someone drive you to the airport.”
We headed out and the first thing I thought of was letting Claire know that I would be out of town, but based on how much time I had before I had to be back, I might just have to give her a call. This couldn’t have come at a worse time. With Claire and Lucy talking with their dad this weekend, I had wanted to be there for her, but I couldn’t just opt out of a job because my girlfriend was emotional, as terrible as that sounded.
After packing for the trip and heading back to Reed Security, I made sure that we were all set for our trip and we hit the road. Cap had ordered Sinner to drive us, which was always an interesting ride.
“Is that a fucking wedding ring?” Pappy asked as he looked over the back seat at Sinner’s ring finger.
“Yep,” he grinned. “Ran off to Vegas last weekend.”
“Why the hell didn’t you have a wedding?” Lola asked.
“Cara didn’t want one. The stress of thinking of planning one sent her into a panic, so we said what the hell and booked a flight.”
“Congratulations, man.” I patted him on the shoulder, happy that he and Cara had finally tied the knot. Whoa, Pappy was right. Since when did I start thinking shit like that.
“I can’t believe you did it. You’re so fucking stupid, tying yourself down to one woman for the rest of your life,” Pappy said, shaking his head.
“You fucking knew I proposed to her. Why the hell would you think I wouldn’t go through with it?” Sinner asked.
“You used lollipops,” Pappy argued. “None of us thought you were serious. Who fucking does that with someone that they really want to marry? I mean, Lola, if a guy proposed to you with lollipops, would you take him seriously?”
“If a guy proposed to me at all, I’d probably shove the lollipops up his ass,” she sneered. “But no, I wouldn’t take that as a serious proposal.”
“See?” Pappy argued. “You can’t really think that any of us expected you to go through with it. We all know how you are with women. I just assumed that you’d get tired of her after a while.”
“I fucking quit my job defending her,” Sinner said incredulously. “At what point did you think, Nah, he’s not serious about her?”
Pappy shook his head as he looked out the window. “Fucking perfect. Next thing you know, Irish will be asking Claire to marry him. He’s already fucking moving her in.”
“I haven’t talked to her about it yet, but yeah, I fully intend on marrying that girl.”
“Pussies. Every last one of you. Lola and I are going to be the only fucking single people left on the team all because you guys can’t think with the right head. I mean, Lola, who’s a girl, no offense-”
“None taken,” Lola replied, not the least be offended.
“-isn’t thinking of settling down for even a minute with some dude. And she’s got all those hormones and shit running through her. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“Women are born to be fucking baby whisperers and go all goopy eyed over any man that walks past them, and you still couldn’t get Lola to settle down. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“Mark my words, you and Lola are going to settle down one day and when you do, I’m going to fucking laugh my ass off and rub it in that you’ve been pussy whipped. Or dick whipped in Lola’s case,” Sinner smirked.
“The day I hand over my balls to some chick is the day I hand in my man card.”
“What about you, Lola? You really have no plans of ever settling down?” I asked.
“With who? Some douchebag that doesn’t even know how to use a weapon? Or maybe I should hook up with one of you idiots, then we could constantly fight over who has the bigger gun, which will always be me.”
“You’re telling me there’s never been a single moment in life when you thought you might want something more than a one night stand?” I asked.
“There might have been a time,” she whispered. “But not anymore.”
“Lola-”
“Can we fucking drop this conversation? So what? Sinner got married. That’s on him to deal with for the rest of his life. If you want to get married? Go for it. Hunter and I will stay blissfully single, fucking whoever we want, whenever we want.”
It was silent for a minute and a little uncomfortable. We all knew there was a time that Lola would have wanted the whole package, but she hadn’t spoken about a man since she was almost scalped all those years ago. She’d been carrying around that baggage with her ever since, but she wore her scar like a badge of honor.
“So, have you and Pappy ever fucked?” Sinner asked, breaking the tension.
“You’re such an asshole,” Pappy said, rolling his eyes.
“You have. I can tell by your face!” I was totally shocked. “How the hell did I never know this?”
“Because we fuck,” Lola sneered. “We don’t make googly eyes at one another and if he ever tried it, I’d make sure that the only way he could please a woman was with his fingers.”
We all cringed, knowing that with Lola, that wasn’t just a threat.
✯✯✯✯✯
We’d been watching Mrs. Arnold and her two boys for three days now. The trial started tomorrow and even though we hadn’t received any threats or noticed anything unusual, I had an uneasy feeling. I began pacing the living room in the hotel suite, going over everything that we knew and our plan for the next day. We had a solid plan, but there was something that just wasn’t right. I couldn’t figure it out though. How was I supposed to protect them like this?
“You have to stop fucking pacing. What’s going on?” Pappy asked from his place on the couch. He was cleaning his weapons, preparing for tomorrow.
“I don’t know. Something’s not right. I can feel it, but I can’t figure it out for the life of me.”
“Let’s go over what we know.”
We spent the next hour going over everything that would happen tomorrow and spitballing ideas on what could go wrong. Any way we looked at it, there wasn’t a single thing that wasn’t covered.
“Derek, I know that you don’t want anything to go wrong, but we have all our bases covered. If something does go wrong, we’ll deal with it like we always do. It’s not going to be because we aren’t prepared though.”
I sighed and sat on the couch, unable to relax. “We need another team. I want to change things up tomorrow. We’ll send in a decoy first. We need to know for sure that nothing’s planned for when we show up at the courthouse.”
“Derek, we don’t have time for this. To get another team in here and prepared for this at the last minute? Not to mention, you don’t know that Cap even has a team available.”
“Don’t fucking argue with me about this, Pappy. I’m fucking telling you that something’s not right and I won’t send her in there until I’m sure nothing’s going to happen.”
Lola stepped up between us and looked me in the eyes. “I’ll do it. We’re about the same size. I’ll need a wig, but it should work. If they’re going to attack, they’ll already know when we’re going to show up, so they won’t wait.”
“You’re sure about this?”
She smirked at me. “Do I look like the type to back away from a challenge?”
“Alright. I’ll get ahold of Cap and tell him what we need. Lola, get whatever you need so that you can pass as Mrs. Arnold.”
Pappy didn’t argue with me anymore as we prepared for our new plan. Cap sent Alec, Craig, and Florrie in as a secondary t
eam. I was placing their team with Mrs. Arnold because there was no way in hell I was letting Lola go in place of Mrs. Arnold and not be there to protect her. We stayed up into the early hours of the morning planning out a new strategy. We weren’t letting anyone in on our plan in case there was someone feeding information to her husband.
By the time we were ready to leave in the morning, my gut was churning, which meant that I was making the right decision. Lola and I rode in the first car while Hunter went ahead of us and got into position in case I was right and there was an attack staged. We successfully tricked the cop that was driving into thinking that Lola was Mrs. Arnold. The real Mrs. Arnold went with Craig, Florrie, and Alec in the second car, but they were taking a different route and weren’t showing up at the courthouse until we gave them the all clear.
As we pulled up, everything looked good and I began to think that I had totally misjudged the whole situation. But as soon as we stepped out of the car, gunfire erupted around us, causing us to take cover back inside the car.
“Drive!” I yelled to the cop in the front seat, but he didn’t respond. It was then I saw the bullet hole through the windshield and his head lolling to the side. The back doors were flung open on both sides and Lola was dragged out along with me. I could see Lola struggling, fighting back as best she could, but the man held a knife to her throat and she was on the verge of losing touch with reality. Her eyes were distant and she was shaking in fear, something I thought would never happen to Lola.
Wrenching the arm from around my neck, I flung him into the car, pulling my gun and unloading a few shots into him. I held my gun on the man holding Lola and shook my head. “She’s not who you’re looking for,” I said. The man looked at me in confusion, but then sirens were closing in on us as cops came flying down the alley, surrounding us within seconds. The cops cuffed the man holding Lola and I rushed to her side as she practically collapsed to the ground. I held her as she cried and blocked everyone from seeing her, knowing she would hate herself if she thought someone saw her break down.
Irish: A Reed Security Romance (Reed Security Series Book 5) Page 14
