by Jenny Penn
Angie didn’t figure that was her problem. After all, she hadn’t made the mess but did plan on eating the results. She was eager to find out if it tasted as good as it smelled and chose to ignore Mike’s scowl and Brett’s snicker as she settled down to begin filling the plate set for her with heaping piles of food.
“Hungry?” Mike lifted a brow, managing to infuse enough irritation into that one word to assure that he was pissed. She could guess why, and she wasn’t apologizing for it.
“Yeah,” Angie shot back, glancing up to catch his gaze. “Brett and I got a morning workout. Its shame you weren’t there to join us.”
“I don’t think you’re ready for that.”
“Why don’t you try me?”
That taunt had Mike’s gaze narrowing dangerously on her. Angie could sense that he was about to try and teach her a lesson, but no sooner had his lips parted than the back door erupted with a mad pounding, followed by a panicked holler.
“Angie! I need you!”
It was Patton, and it couldn’t have been good.
“Angie!”
“Don’t think we aren’t going to pick this conversation back up later,” Mike warned her before lifting up and heading for the door.
That had her looking toward Brett for an explanation of what his brother meant. He wasn’t in the mood to offer it. Instead, he was giving her a look that made Angie’s nerves tingle with an almost ticklish sensation.
“What?” Angie lifted a brow at him, all but daring him to give voice to the glint shining in his eyes. Brett was never one to back down from a challenge.
“I had fun this morning.”
“Why am I not shocked?”
“Because you are smart enough to know that I’m hooked now. A free taste, and the next one is going to cost me what?”
Angie had a response to that. She just didn’t get a chance to get it out before Patton was rushing into the kitchen. Barely sparing Mike a glance or Brett a hello, she latched onto Angie’s arm and yanked her right out of her seat.
“We need to talk. Now!”
“Please tell me there hasn’t been another fire,” Angie begged as she allowed herself to be shoved back through the doorway and into the hall.
“Trust me, this is worse than death.”
“What the hell is worth than death?” Angie asked as Patton continued to hustle her back toward her borrowed bedroom. Patton threw the door open and all but shoved Angie into the bedroom.
“Life,” Patton answered succinctly, slamming the door closed behind her as she turned to confront Angie. For the first time, she paused, her gaze cutting over Angie’s shoulder and widening. “Jesus, what the hell happened in here?”
“What?” Angie turned to glance around.
“It looks like a clothing bomb exploded all over the place.”
“I haven’t had time to straighten up,” Angie shot back defensively. It wasn’t that bad.
“You better learn to straighten up a hell of a lot more often if you’re going to be shacking up with two marines.” Patton spoke as if she were some kind of authority in shacking up with marines.
“Ex-marines,” Angie corrected her as she turned to narrow her eyes on Patton. “And you didn’t rush me all the way back here to discuss my housekeeping habits because I was enjoying my breakfast, and I could—”
“The flash drive is gone.” Patton cut her off with that cryptic confession, as if that made any sense.
“What flash drive?”
“Don’t you remember?” Patton huffed. “I told you yesterday that a few weeks ago I copied the club’s membership files onto a—”
“Flash drive.” Angie did remember now that Patton had mentioned it. She could see now why the other woman was panicking, too. The tinge of hysteria began to tint her tone as well. “What do you mean it’s gone?”
“Well, I gave it to Heather…Heather Lawson, you know, the very responsible, solid, reliable—”
“You can just call her uptight and be done with it, Patton,” Angie snapped. “Not that it much matters. Are you telling me she lost the flash drive?”
“I don’t know if I would use the word lost so much as misplaced.”
“Patton!”
“She put it in her desk drawer at work, and it’s not there now.” Patton grimaced, slinking backward as Angie felt her face begin to heat and her temper, rarely stirred, begin to boil.
“So it just grew legs and walked off?”
Patton didn’t have an answer for that, just a shrug.
“Patton, this isn’t a joke,” Angie stressed. “That flash drive could destroy the club if it became public.”
Worse than that, it could destroy the Davis brothers. Their names wouldn’t be worth spit in a bucket after the club’s members got done with them. Their lives would be utterly ruined and, no doubt, their relationship with Patton, too. She knew it. That was obvious from the pain and fear in Patton’s tone.
“Don’t you think I know that?” Patton looked up helplessly at Angie. “Chase is going to kill me.”
Angie knew she was expected to say that he wouldn’t but couldn’t bring herself to lie. He just might. Hell, he wouldn’t even have to pull the trigger. All Chase had to do was throw Patton out and her world would come to an end.
Part of Angie rebelled at that thought, wanting to see her normally strong and confident friend take on this challenge with her usual exuberance, but another part of Angie understood Patton’s terror. It had been a long, lonely rode to Brett and Mike’s door. If they slammed it in her face, she didn’t know if she could turn toward the darkness.
So, despite her better judgments, Angie found herself trying to offer Patton some assistance and heartfelt advice.
“He’ll be more likely to forgive you if go confess to him right now.” Less likely didn’t mean quickly or that there wouldn’t be hell to pay, and they both knew that. “Beg his forgiveness and give him a chance to get out in front of this thing.”
That was the reasonable, rational, mature thing to do, but if Patton were any of those things, she wouldn’t have copied the damn files onto the flash drive to begin with.
“Are you nuts?” Patton gaped up at her. “Did you just hear me? Chase is going to kill me!”
“Then what the hell are you going to do?”
That appeared to stump Patton for a moment, but all too quickly, the crazy gleam returned to her gaze. “I know. We’ll conduct our own investigation.”
“No.”
“But—“
“No.” Angie cut her off, not about to be sucked into Patton’s lunacy. Angie wasn’t a teenager anymore. If she got arrested, she’d be tried as an adult. “I don’t know anything about conducting that kind of investigation and neither do you.”
That bought her a moment of sanity, but it didn’t last. “Then we’ll hire a professional.”
“Who?” Angie demanded to know. “You can’t bring an outsider into this. Chase will really kill you then.”
“GD.”
“GD gave his job up at the club because he wanted to spend more time out at the camp with his new girl.”
Not to mention that Slade already had him looking into Gwen’s death. Apparently, the woman had been blackmailing a whole list of men. Angie didn’t know all the details, and didn’t want to. What she did know was that Patton didn’t know the details either, and Slade wanted it kept that way. He and his brothers didn’t want her to worry, which just went to prove that Patton wasn’t the only one hiding things.
“Oh, I know!” Patton exploded off the bed in a rush of excitement, drawing Angie’s attention back to her with a scowl. Whatever had Patton happy couldn’t be good news.
Chapter 11
Patton barreled past her to throw the bedroom door open wide and take off down the hall, leaving Angie to chase after her. “Where are you going?”
To the kitchen, apparently. Patton came to an abrupt stop, causing Angie to plow into her and drawling both Mike’s and Brett’s attention
in their direction. The brothers had finished breakfast and were cleaning up, though they had left her plate untouched. Angie counted her luck to have two such domestic and thoughtful men. Or she would have if she hadn’t been in a panic over just what Patton intended to do.
“Mike.” Patton turned on him where he stood by the sink. “Rumor has it that you had a nightmare of a date last night.”
“Patton—” Angie tried to cut her off, but it was to no avail. There never was any stopping Patton when she started going.
“You know you were set up, right?” Patton ignored Angie to taunt Mike with that and bring up a point that was still clearly sore.
“Yep.” Mike cast a dark look in Angie’s direction, one Patton clearly misread.
“It isn’t Angie’s fault,” Patton rushed to assure him, defending Angie, but not out of the goodness of her heart. “It was Slade.”
“I know that.” Mike’s gaze assured Angie that Patton didn’t know the rest.
Thankfully, Patton didn’t give him a chance to enlighten her on those details because, while Patton had seemed to completely forget that Angie had lied to her for these past few years about the club, she didn’t think her friend would be nearly as forgiving for what she’d done with the Davis brothers.
It probably hadn’t been right of her, but in Angie’s defense, they were that good. It wasn’t as if they weren’t doing it with everybody else, she assured herself, but that didn’t make her feel any less guilty or cool the heat warming her cheeks.
“Oh, well…you want revenge?”
“Oh yeah.”
Mike nodded, his gaze darkening with a look that had Angie’s breath catching. There was an ominous note to his tone that assured her he was issuing a warning, one that had her tingling with anticipation. He knew it. The satisfied smile tugging at the edges of his lips curled higher into a full smirk as he shifted his attention back to Patton.
“What have you got in mind?”
“Well….really, you’ll just be….kind of…..helping me out, and just not telling Slade…or Chase or Devin.” Patton stumbled through that request, ending with a hopeful smile as both Brett and Mike narrowed their eyes on her.
“That doesn’t exactly sound like revenge,” Brett commented slowly, pausing to give Patton a chance to respond, but she didn’t really help her cause when she smiled and shrugged.
“I can’t really tell you the details until I’m certain of your loyalty.”
“Oh for God’s sake.” Angie rolled her eyes. They were in serious trouble, and Patton was playing games. “What she means to say is that she—”
“Angie!”
Angie continued right on over Patton’s objection and ignored the outraged look the other woman shot in her direction. “Copied the entire membership list along with all personal files onto a flash drive. She gave it to Heather Lawson, who, apparently, left it in her desk drawer, and now it’s gone.”
“Well, thank you very much, Miss Helpful,” Patton spat. “Now I might have to kill them!”
“Hold up.” Mike raised a hand into the air, asking for silence before shooting Patton an appalled look. “You did what?”
“I think the question you want to ask is why,” Brett corrected him, appearing more amused by the moment as he shook his head at Patton. “Because you know Chase is going to kill you.”
“I know,” Patton huffed sulkily.
“I mean, he really is going to kill you,” Brett repeated, clearly fighting back the chuckles.
“Are you going to help me or not?”
“I don’t know if I’m ready to die yet.” Brett appeared to consider that as his brother took the matter a little more seriously, or at least, he was a little more curious.
“Help you do what?” Mike asked cautiously, as if he almost half expected the answer to bite him.
“Find the flash drive, duh!”
“And why do you think we would know how to do that?” Mike pressed, appearing fascinated despite himself. He was even, perhaps, a little amused.
Patton wasn’t. Her gaze narrowed on him as she all but snarled. “I just thought you might be able to figure it out. After all, you are marines. Aren’t you supposed to solve problems?”
“You know that attitude isn’t helping,” Brett shot back as he glanced down pointedly at the floor. “But begging might.”
“Oh, screw you, Brett!” Patton snapped as she stormed toward the back door. “I’ll just go find the damn thing myself.”
With that grand declaration, Patton slammed out of the kitchen, leaving Angie staring after her while Brett burst into laughter and Mike scowled.
“She’s not kidding, is she?” He directed that question at her, and Angie couldn’t help but shake her head.
“Nope.”
“Great,” he groaned.
“So?” Angie lifted a brow, completely ignoring Brett. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m not an investigator, Angie. I’m an ex-marine.” That sounded reasonable, but that didn’t change the situation. There really was nobody left to ask for help.
“I could make it worth your while,” Angie offered.
“Is that a fact?” That question came from Brett, who sobered up quickly as he cast her a big grin. “And just how you planning on doing that?”
“I’ll lift the no-pussy-at-the-club rule.”
It took a momentous amount of faith and courage to make that offer, but really it didn’t matter. They could always have broken the rules. The decision to be faithful, to choose her, had to be theirs. Destiny was theirs to choose.
“And what about you?” Mike seemed far from pleased with her graciousness. In fact, his expression only darkened as he pressed her. “Are you allowed to stray as well?”
She never would. He should know that. So, instead of offering him the reassurance he clearly wanted, she dared to search for some herself.
“Does it matter?”
* * * *
Did it?
Yes. It did, and he couldn’t fight that truth anymore. Mike had considered Brett’s comments for a better part of the night to finally admit that his brother might have a point. Attempting to hurt Angie wasn’t exactly a rational thing to do if he wanted to prevent her from getting hurt.
That didn’t mean he was completely ready to give in.
“Whatever.” Mike shrugged as if it meant nothing to him.
“Let me interpret that for you, Angie.” Brett stepped in, ignoring the dark look Mike shot him. “That’s Mike’s way of saying it matters.”
“Shut the fuck up, man. I can speak for myself,” Mike snapped, hating the betraying heat he could feel flooding his cheeks.
“Then why don’t you?” Brett shot back.
“Because I don’t have anything to say.” That was a lie.
His brother knew it. God knew what Brett would have said next, but he didn’t get a chance before Angie drew their attention back toward her as she stepped around the counter to reach a hand up and cup his jaw. She turned Mike’s head until his gaze connected with hers and he could see the depths of her affection shining there in her eyes. It about damn near undid him.
“If I wanted dick, I would have gotten some a long time ago,” Angie stated without a single hint of hesitation. “So it doesn’t really matter. What matters is Patton and the mess she’s about to make. I have a feeling she’s headed for trouble.”
“Fine.” Mike sighed as he gave in with ill grace, eager to end this conversation and escape the soft, gooey emotions trying to weaken him. “I’ll help her out, but somebody does really need to tell the Davis boys before they find out the hard way and we all suffer their displeasure.”
That dour warning earned him a smile from Angie, as she seemed to relax, though he had no idea why. “Worried they might kill you?”
“I’d like to see them try. Of course, I have to go find her.” Mike glanced over toward the door, wondering where he should start looking. “Either one of you got any idea where Patton took off
to?”
“Probably to go talk to Heather or tear apart her kitchen,” Angie suggested. “Which should be interesting, given Heather is dating the sheriff. I’ll put fifty down on the two of you being arrested by the end of the day.”
“You wanna bet?” Brett perked up at that. “Because, while I am not going to take your money, we could do something like what they have at the club. Bet ourselves some buckles.”
“Yeah?” Angie’s brow lifted as her smile grew outrageously suggestive. “What are you going to do with buckles?”
“Give me fifty, and I’ll show you.” Brett wagged his brows back at her.
“Since it’s my ass on the line, I should be the one who gets to enjoy winning,” Mike weighed in, reminding them both that this was his challenge. It wasn’t the only one.
“Really? You think you’re up to claiming a victory?” Angie asked too innocently.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Mike demanded to know, recognizing the insult and guessing at its source as he all but dared her to say it aloud.
“That, when the time comes, I’m figuring I’m going to have to tie you down to the bed or else find myself alone in it at a pivotal point,” Angie stated with no hint of concern for his growing scowl.
“And what the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“That you like to run away like a little girl,” Brett called out cheerily.
“Brett!”
“Hey, I say it like it is.” Brett held his hands up in surrender, even thought he was far from contrite. “And we all know the truth here.”
“And what the hell does that mean?”
“You do know you are repeating yourself, right?” Brett frowned at him as he studied Mike with mock concern. “Isn’t that like a sign of a stroke or something?”
Mike clenched his jaw closed and growled as he tried to stare down his brother’s smirk. It didn’t work, but then he didn’t have long to really try before Angie stroked the backs of her fingers up his cheek. Her touch was electric, her skin as soft as the finest silks. His gaze met hers, and he felt the fire of recognition shoot through him.
