Chase nodded in agreement. “It’s far too industrial for my tastes. The Club is better. We love spanking pretty subs. I watched your spanking the other day, Lexi. You took it with such grace.”
“Shut that shit down now, Aidan,” Jack advised. “Otherwise, you’ll deal with it forever. I still have to warn Leo that I intend to kill his ass every time I go into The Club.”
Aidan reached out and grabbed Ben’s shirt, pulling him close. “She belongs to me and Lucas. If you have a problem with that, we can solve it right now, out in the back. Many an ass has been kicked in the back of this diner.”
Lucas leaned over to talk to Chase, who had an amused look on his handsome face. “I won’t do anything so forward. My partner is the aggressive one. I’ll wait. I’ll ruin you financially, and then when you think I’ve forgotten you, I’ll be that dark figure in an alley you see just before you get your throat slit.”
“Lucas!” She was shocked at how dark his voice had gone.
Chase rolled his eyes. “God, I hate switches. They know all the tricks.”
Jack looked up, a paternally proud expression on his face. “I taught him well.”
Ben sat back down and took on a distinctly professional air. “Fine. The girl is off-limits. You can’t blame us. She doesn’t have a collar.”
“Pretend it’s there.” Aidan held out a chair for her.
“You are both Neanderthals,” she groused as she sat down and picked up the menu.
“Get used to it, baby,” her mother said, grinning at her from her seat. “You’ll find that’s the way men get when they’re damn serious. It doesn’t matter. Dom, switch, sub.”
“Well, I’m not a sub when it comes to my woman getting hit on,” Sam said, an odd primness to his tone. “My fists work just as well as Jack’s.”
“Hi.” The waitress who had taken her mom’s order turned to Lexi. Her eyes widened as she took in Lucas. The pretty, slender brunette flushed. “Hi. Can I get you anything? Anything at all?”
“He’s taken, Mandy,” Aidan said with a laugh. “I can see I have to deal with a lot of this. Men, women, even my damn dog has taken to my subs.”
Lucas winked, and Mandy looked back and forth, her lips going up in a giggle. She took the orders and bounced off.
“She’ll gossip, you know,” Lucas said with a frown. “This is a small town. It could cause trouble for you.”
“It will cause trouble,” Lexi corrected. Her mother had grown up in a small town, lived there now. Only her husbands’ money granted her any acceptance, and Lexi had heard they still called her “That Woman” behind her back. Maybe Aidan didn’t know what he was in for.
“I don’t think Aidan cares,” a new voice said. Lexi looked up and saw a cowboy with a pleasant smile standing by Aidan. Aidan stood and shook hands with the man.
“Lexi, Lucas, this is Dwight Creely.” Aidan introduced the man who stood a few inches shorter than him but was thickly muscled. He had a quiet air about him. He shook Lucas’s hand and tipped his hat at her. After all the introductions were made, he sat down.
“I’m Aidan’s foreman. He asked me to come to this meeting. I take care of the security for the ranch,” Dwight explained.
Ben Dawson sat forward. “You were also in the Army with Aidan, right?”
Dwight stilled, and then the smile was back. “Yes, I was.”
“Interesting,” Chase added, his hands flying across the keyboard of his computer.
“Not really. That was a long time ago,” Aidan said, shifting uncomfortably, his hand going to the small of his back.
Without even thinking about it, she reached out and massaged the spot.
Aidan’s whole face softened. “Thank you, angel.”
She stroked the tight muscles, telling herself she’d do it for anyone.
Ben and Chase started in on their report. They had found out all of the usual stuff. Her job was boring, and no one would want to kill her over it. Most of her close friends were at The Club. They were almost all submissives, and even their Doms liked Lexi. They couldn’t find a single person who she hadn’t done something nice for. She was known for having a sarcastic mouth and a ridiculously warm heart. Her neighbor had been so upset about the shooting that she’d cried. She took Mrs. Darren, an elderly widower, to her frequent doctor appointments.
“I can’t imagine anyone wanting to kill my daughter,” Abby said, leaning across to pat Lexi’s shoulder.
She gave Aidan’s back one last squeeze. The muscles had stopped seizing. “I don’t know, Momma. That jackass last year seemed very determined.”
Lucas’s face went stark white. “Could this be about me?”
Ben stared for a moment, and Lexi could practically see his brain working. “We’ve had McKay-Taggart’s resident shrink work up some profiles on people close to Ms. Moore and Mr. Cameron. She didn’t find anything that worried her. I haven’t discarded the idea that this is someone close to one of you yet, but I don’t think so. Your legal work revolves around your brother’s business and Mr. Lodge’s investments. You acquired several companies for Mr. Lodge recently. I’m exploring the possibility that one of the former owners could be upset.”
“I also checked into your brother, Aidan,” Chase stated bluntly. “Eve disagrees with me, but I don’t trust profiles. They can be wrong. And she’s working with one hand tied behind her back because she’s not allowed to interview her subjects.”
“We can’t haul all the people in our life in for invasive interviews on the off chance that they might have taken a shot at me.” She couldn’t stand the thought of her friends and acquaintances being put through an Ian Taggart interrogation. “But why would you be looking into Bo?”
Aidan tensed beside her. “He was here in Deer Run last night. He called me from the house phone.”
“At what time?” Chase asked.
“Before the scene at The Club.”
Ben and his brother looked at each other. They seemed to have a whole conversation through a series of small facial movements. Finally Ben, who seemed to take the lead most of the time, turned back. “It would be tight, but he could have made it. The two of you fought over the terms of your father’s will?”
She couldn’t imagine it was Bo. He’d been a sweet kid when she’d known him. Even today, he’d treated her sister with kindness.
Aidan’s hands folded together, and he seemed to be squeezing them tight. “He was unhappy when he realized Dad had left the ranch to me. Bo felt like he deserved it. I never wanted to ranch when I was younger. I wanted to be a musician. Then I went into the Army and lost a couple of fingers in a firefight. My hands don’t work the way they used to.”
Ben leaned forward. “Why did your father leave you the ranch?”
Dwight snorted. “Because he had a brain in his head. Bo couldn’t find his ass with a GPS locator.”
“Don’t. He’s just a kid,” Aidan protested.
“He’s twenty-four, Aidan,” Dwight shot back. “He needs to grow up. He needs to get a job.”
“He has a job,” Aidan insisted.
“I’d like to talk about what happened to your squad. It’s the one thing Eve and I agree on. There’s something off about the reports.” Chase Dawson said the words smoothly, but they dropped with a thud as both Aidan and Dwight paled.
“I don’t see how it has anything to do with this,” Dwight said, sitting back in his chair. “It happened a long time ago. No need to bring up bad memories.”
Chase shrugged as though it didn’t matter. “I have a nose for these things.”
“I thought you were investigating the shooting.” Aidan put a hand to his head. Lexi could see how his eyes tightened as though he was in pain.
“We are, but before that Big Tag worked up a report on you and he included records of your military service,” Chase replied. “He still has deep ties with the military and several intelligence agencies. He was very thorough.”
Aidan frowned. “I knew he’d looked into my ba
ckground, but are you saying Taggart had someone profile me? Like a serial killer?”
“Absolutely he did. She interviewed you. Remember Eve St. James? She cleared you,” Ben replied. “Unequivocally stated you’re not a serial killer. But yes, she worked up a profile on you at Mr. Lodge’s request. If it helps, Eve liked you very much. She believes that now that you’ve made the decision to embrace this lifestyle, you won’t go back. You’ll remain faithful.”
“Yeah, Eve likes all the yucky emotional stuff,” Chase said. “I’m more interested in that firefight. I go where the information leads me, and sometimes I simply follow my own instincts.”
“Chase is a brilliant investigator,” Ben explained. “He’s the brains. I’m the beauty.”
Well, that said a lot since they were identical twins. But she could already tell the difference. Ben was charming, while Chase was dark and broody. If she was going to write them, she’d give Chase a single scar on his face to utterly differentiate them. Chase was the one who would get into trouble. He was the one who could hurt someone. Ben would balance his brother. He would be funny and open. She could write them into a romantic suspense novel. They were perfect for it.
“Lexi?” Lucas leaned in. “Are you with us or on another planet?”
Her mom was looking at her, too. “That’s her working face. She’s had it since she was a kid. When she was thinking up a story, she would get that far-off look, and I would know to let her alone for a while.”
“She wrote a bit today,” Lucas offered. “She’s probably thinking about that.”
Her mother looked misty, and she suddenly seemed to see Aidan differently. “Are you getting a headache?”
Aidan turned to Abby. “A little one, yes. I get migraines from time to time.”
“Well, given the extent of your injuries in the line of duty, I would say migraines are the least of your problems. Jack mentioned how badly you were hurt. How long did it take for you to walk again?” Abby asked.
Aidan flushed. “The better part of a year.”
“Spinal cord injury?” Her mother’s tone had taken on that nurse practicality. She’d worked in some of the busiest trauma centers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. “How many surgeries?”
“Eight,” Aidan replied.
She felt her stomach turn. He’d had eight surgeries? She’d seen the scars, but he seemed so healthy. With the exception of the weak knee and his back spasms, she hadn’t seen him have a single problem. How much was he compensating to look strong?
“Do you remember the incident that led to your injury?” Chase’s blue eyes were laser-focused on Aidan. Ben sat back, obviously ceding the floor to his brother. “I’ve read the Army’s official report, and I have some questions. Mr. Creely was the only one who survived? He got out of the incident relatively unscathed.”
“He took a knife to the gut. I hardly call that unscathed.” Aidan massaged a place right between his eyes. “I wouldn’t have survived without Dwight.”
Chase looked at his computer screen. “Really? According to the leader of the team that found you, it was the dog barking that led them to you.”
“I stayed,” Dwight said. “I stayed with him. I kept the Iraqi soldiers off us until the G Squad could get to us. And how did you get that report? It’s supposed to be classified.”
Chase leaned forward with a silky smile. He cracked his fingers the way a virtuoso piano player might. “There’s not a lot of security that these fingers can’t get through. I told you. I follow my nose, and I don’t like that report. Maybe it has nothing to do with this. Maybe it does. But all of that is superfluous. The report states clearly that Sergeant Aidan O’Malley remembered nothing of the attack that decimated his squad.”
“I dream about it at night.” Aidan’s voice was low and gravelly. She reached out and placed her hand on his back again. Lucas sat forward.
“Those dreams don’t mean anything. He’s talked to me about them, and they don’t make a lick of sense.” Dwight’s hands were threaded together, red from tightness. “He didn’t dream when he was taking the sleeping pills the doctors prescribed.”
“I told you why I stopped. They make me drowsy even during the day. I can’t live my life like that.” Aidan’s eyes closed.
Dwight pushed back from the table. “Yeah, well, you should have told me when you decided to stop taking them. I would have helped you. Damn it, Aidan. You know I’ve told you everything that happened. Why do you have to push this? You’re going to kill yourself over this, you know it.”
Dwight stalked out of the room.
Aidan watched him go. “Forgive him. He remembers. Sometimes I think he wishes he didn’t. Does anyone have an aspirin?”
“Could we get a glass of water, here?” Her mother stood and gestured for Lucas to stand as well. “Lucas, rub his scalp. Aidan, close your eyes and don’t think about it. I would bet the migraines come when you try to think too hard about that day. I’ve seen this in PTSD patients with memory loss. Let the memory go, and you might be able to avoid the migraine.”
Aidan closed his eyes but laughed a bit. “That whole ‘don’t think about it’ thing never works. Now I can’t help but think about it.”
Lucas massaged his scalp, eliciting a groan from Aidan. Lucas leaned forward, his voice low, but Lexi could hear. “Think of something nicer. Remember how hot our sub looked tied to the rack? She was so tight, Sir. She practically cut off the circulation in my dick, but I wasn’t about to stop fucking her.”
Lexi felt her eyes go wide, but her mother merely shook her head.
“I did not need to hear that, Lucas.” Abby moved back to her table, where Jack was laughing, and Sam was trying to figure out what Lucas had said.
“Hey,” Jack said. “He’s not thinking about what happened to him in Iraq anymore.”
“No,” Aidan said sullenly. “I’m thinking about what didn’t happen to me in the barn.”
“Who had the waffles?” Mandy asked, returning with a tray of food.
“I did!” Olivia screamed. “I had waffles.” She sank back down. “But Aidan can have them if he needs them. He’s not supposed to remember stuff, so he might not have remembered that he wants waffles. I think he’s doing a good job at not remembering, cuz I heard that he forgot to marry my sister.”
Everyone stopped and stared at Olivia who seemed mighty comfortable with all the attention on her.
Aidan laughed, his head falling forward. He looked up, and for a second, she saw the old Aidan in his eyes, the Aidan who laughed and sang and played the guitar, the Aidan who had loved her so long and so well that she’d never been able to forget him.
“I won’t forget this time, Olivia,” Aidan said with a broad smile. “I promise.”
“You better not,” her mother said with a tight nod.
Lexi’s chest felt tight. She wasn’t sure what was going to win, heartache at what had happened between them, or hope that it might be different this time. She wished they weren’t having this discussion in front of her mother.
“Are you going to marry my Uncle Lucas, too?” Olivia asked.
“Absolutely,” Aidan replied without hesitation.
Mandy’s tray clattered to the floor, food spilling everywhere.
Lucas merely chuckled and went back to his massage.
Ben and Chase exchanged a glance.
“Gotta love a small town,” Ben said with a grin.
Chapter Twelve
Aidan felt much better as he pulled the truck into the driveway. Ben and Chase Dawson were checking into the only motel in town, as was the whole Barnes-Fleetwood clan. He might have been happier if his future mother-in-law had gone home for the time being, but Olivia had spotted a Ferris wheel. Aidan had completely forgotten that this weekend was the end-of-summer fair. They all now had a date to attend the fair later that night.
Lexi had been quiet all through lunch. She’d seemed contemplative rather than irritated with him. He had to be grateful for that.
; “How could you tell my parents that you were going to marry me?” Lexi asked quietly, her hands folded over her lap.
His senses went on high alert. She might be moving out of her contemplative state.
He didn’t miss Lucas’s sharp sigh. It was his way of telling Aidan that he better not fuck this up. They were starting to have their own language. “Because I mean it. Because I love you. I’m going to marry you and Lucas.”
“So, you get to drop back in and take over?” Yep, the irritation was creeping into her tone.
Oh, he’d figured out long ago how to handle this discussion. “I am the Dom, angel. I’m in charge, but Lucas and I will figure this out. We’ll all three of us hold a rational discussion about how to handle the legalities, but I want us together. If you want to legally marry Lucas, then that’s what we’ll do. I love you.”
Lucas quietly got out of the car, but Lexi charged after him. She didn’t wait for Aidan to hand her down as she had before. She stomped off, every muscle in her body tense and ready for a fight. Before he could get out of the cab, Lexi had slammed into the house.
Lucas stood at the door, his face a solemn mask. “She won’t go down easy. She’s been through a lot. You have to know that if I didn’t think you were good for her, I wouldn’t be here.”
His stomach did a weird flip-flop. “I don’t want you to be here only for her. God, I know you don’t believe me, but I’ll prove it to you. I love you. I’m in this for life now. I won’t ever leave.”
Maybe he should track down that profile the shrink had done on him and force them both to read it.
A secret smile crinkled Lucas’s perfect face. “Next time you leave, I’ll hunt you down, Sir. I might allow you to top me, but never think I’m not your equal.”
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