by Sophie Oak
She did know that. Her stepfather loved her. Julian did, too, in his strange way. She belonged to Jack’s family and was friends with Julian’s loves. She was Julian’s family, too. “I know they do. I just worry about how they might show their love. They can be a bit overwhelming at times.”
Leo’s grin spread across his face. “See, pure sanity right there. Just keep that in mind, and we’ll all get through this. Let’s meet here at this time tomorrow, and we can talk through your experience tonight.”
Leo bounced on to his feet and walked to his day planner. He made a note while Lexi got out of her chair.
“Leo?”
“Yes?”
“Is that stuff about your mom really true?” It seemed too perfect. It had been exactly the right thing to say to her.
He turned a picture on his desk around and showed her. There was Leo and a man who looked slightly younger, but awfully like him. In the middle of the men was a petite woman with her steel gray hair in a long braid. There were mountains behind them, and they smiled for the camera. “This was taken when my brother was last on leave. My mom’s new boyfriend took it. Now there’s an insane person. Well, he’s from the next town over. Everyone in that freaking town is butt-fuck crazy. I’m totally moving there one day.”
Lexi took a deep breath. Maybe everyone was a little crazy. Maybe she just needed to talk. Not about everything, but some of it. She really did feel better. She walked to the door and started to open it.
“And, Lexi, one day we’re going to have to talk about it.”
She turned at the dark sound in his voice. “Talk about what?”
“What you lost, Lexi. You lost something, and it was so much more important than a fiancé or your sense of security. What you lost haunts you every moment of the day, and it will continue to do so until you talk about it. I’ll be here when you’re ready.”
She walked out the door, her sense of calm utterly blown. She would never be ready to talk about it. Not ever.
Chapter Three
Aidan stood next to Julian, looking out over the dungeon. Preparations were being made. All over the atmospheric space, the staff was cleaning and checking the equipment for safety. Julian was still dressed in his day suit, but Aidan knew that soon the businessman would trade in his thousand-dollar tailored suit for a pair of leathers. Aidan would do it, as well, with one exception. Aidan would cover his face with a mask. Neither Lexi nor Lucas would recognize his ravaged body, but they would probably still remember his face. He’d like a chance to work on them before he got slapped or punched.
“You practiced?”
Aidan nodded. “Yes. I worked with the six-footer, but I would prefer to use the four-footer. It’s more accurate.”
“I think you should consider something a bit more creative in your punishment this evening. The whip can be intimidating, but it’s not very intimate. I believe Lexi will be perfectly amenable to a whip. After all, she and Lucas perform such scenes every weekend. She takes the whip, cries, he holds her, and they begin the cycle again. I didn’t bring you in so they could add a third person to a cycle of behavior that isn’t working for them.” Julian slanted him one of those glances that made Aidan feel like he was five years old and being called to the principal’s office. “Have you given any real thought to this?”
Aidan got his meaning. Come up with something fast, or I’ll call this off. Luckily, he had a little fantasy in his head. It was really an apology and an attempt to bind them all together. It was what he should have done that night years before. “Edging. I’ll do a little edge play and some spanking. I’ll have her begging by the end, and I’ll make sure Lucas is involved.”
“Excellent.”
Aidan’s blood was thrumming through his veins. Edging? He was the one on edge, and he had been all day. Two hours to go.
Leo strode into the room. Like Julian, he was in day clothes, but unlike his boss, he stopped and talked to practically everyone in the room.
“Such a chatty Dom,” Julian said with a long-suffering sigh. “Leo! I don’t have all day.”
Leo grinned and shook hands with one of the cleaning staff before his long legs ate the distance between him and Julian. “Of course you do, Julian. You’re the boss. You have all the time in the world.”
“Naturally. Now, tell me if Lexi is going to be here tonight.”
Aidan felt his gut tighten. He hadn’t really considered the possibility that Leo wouldn’t clear her for play. “Lexi is sane. She’s not crazy.”
“Oh, she’s buckets of crazy,” Leo announced with a laugh. “Seriously, girlfriend has some problems, but nothing that would keep her from here.”
Aidan relaxed. He could handle that. Leo thought everyone was crazy in their own unique way.
“Did she talk to you?” Julian asked.
“In a sense. Did she get to the heart of her problem? No. It will take more than a little simple conversation to get her to give that up.”
“Give what up?” Aidan asked.
Julian turned to Aidan and seemed to consider whether or not he should talk. “I believe Alexis is hiding something. I don’t know if Lucas knows her secret, or if she’s kept it completely hidden. Jackson and Leo believe this as well. According to Jackson, she was sad and somewhat depressed by your departure, but she didn’t go into a deep depression until several months later. She was in a car accident in Austin. Lucas was the only one she called. Shortly after, she left her job at the newspaper and moved to Dallas. From what I can tell, she’s stopped writing all together.”
That made his heart ache. Lexi was always writing on something. She carried a notepad in her overblown bag so she would always have paper. She even kept a dream journal because she said she got story ideas while she slept. Aidan could remember all the times he would walk in with her coffee in hand to find her furiously writing. He loved those mornings. He would sit and strum his guitar, writing songs while Lexi wrote a new story. Lucas would show up on the weekends, and they would sit outside when the weather was nice. Just the three of them. They wouldn’t talk. They had simply enjoyed each other’s presence.
He couldn’t play anymore. He’d accepted that. But, by god, he would never accept that Lexi wouldn’t write.
“What happened?”
Julian’s shoulders moved up and down in a negligent shrug. “I don’t know, but I doubt it’s the car accident that truly troubles her. The other driver was at fault, and he walked away injury free. He was drunk. He pled out and served a little time in jail. He was caught violating his parole about six months after he got out and was sent back to serve his full sentence. So sad.”
Leo’s eyebrows rose on his head as he stared at Julian. “That’s what happens when a man gets a private investigative team following him twenty-four-seven.”
“I didn’t force him into the bar, Leo. I merely made sure my men called it in.”
Aidan kind of loved Julian Lodge in that moment. Still, he’d spent enough time in a hospital bed that the thought of Lexi being in pain just fucking killed him. He should have been there. He should have been the one she called, and then he would have called Lucas. He would never leave Lucas out. He knew now that he needed Lucas. “She was okay? What do her medical records say?”
Julian’s mouth turned down. “I asked her about it. She told me to butt out. As she is not my slave, I have respected her wishes up to this point. If I do something like buy her medical records, she won’t trust me. This is all about trust, Aidan. I’m risking Alexis’s trust by bringing you in, but we’ve reached a point where it’s worth the risk.”
Leo slapped Aidan on the back. “I think it will work. She seems more open than she has in months. Of course, I don’t expect it to be perfectly smooth, but I think eventually she’ll realize that both she and Lucas need you. You should probably start getting ready. Won’t be long now.”
Aidan said goodbye, trying to process everything he’d just learned. As he reached the elevator that would take him to his room, h
is cell phone rang. He punched the button code for the hotel portion of the building and pulled his phone out of his pocket. Dwight. He sighed. He was about to get a lecture.
“Hey, man, how is the ranch?”
Dwight Creely was his foreman. He’d also been Aidan’s friend in the Army. They had been in the same squad in Iraq. When Aidan had been injured, Dwight was the one who sat by his bedside. Dwight had taken some heavy fire during the mission that almost cost Aidan his legs, but he’d put it aside to check on his friend. When they were both discharged, Dwight had followed Aidan back home to help on the ranch Aidan had inherited, much to Bo’s never-ending dismay.
“Well, the boss is gone, so Bo is trying to run the show.” The complaint came out as a low rumble.
Aidan should have expected it. Bo hated the fact that their father had left the ranch to him and only left Bo some cash. Aidan had been ready to sign over a portion to Bo when Bo had walked out of the lawyer’s office and threatened to sue and hadn’t said a word to Aidan for a month and a half. Aidan was at loss. He knew Bo hadn’t gotten a fair shake, but he needed to keep the ranch whole if he was going to make it work. Bo, for his part, had made a nuisance of himself around the ranch, fighting with Dwight at every turn.
It looked like baby brother was at it again.
“Put him on his ass,” Aidan said. It was what he would do. He’d been forced to, as though it was the only way to prove to Bo he was still a man. Even when he’d been on crutches, learning to walk again, his brother wouldn’t let up. He was a constant little pest buzzing in his ear.
“As long as I have permission, it will be my pleasure. But seriously, Aidan, it would be better if you came home. Bo isn’t the only one causing trouble around town. Karen is telling everyone that the two of you are back together and getting married.”
He nearly threw the phone. Karen Wilcox was rapidly becoming a pain in his ass. She’d been his high school girlfriend. It had been natural. She’d been the head cheerleader, and he’d been the quarterback. Aidan had done what he’d always done—he had played the role designated to him. When he’d left for college, she’d almost immediately married another man. Karen’s husband was older and established, with money to burn on a young trophy wife.
By the time he’d come home, broken and battered, Karen’s husband had died, and she’d been left very little money in his will. She hadn’t decided to visit his convalescent bed until the day it was announced he’d inherited the ranch. That day she’d been full of heartfelt concern for his injuries and talked about how much she would miss his father now that he was gone. Karen had hated his father. He hadn’t bought her crap back then and didn’t buy it now.
“Goddamn it, I haven’t touched that woman. I have no interest in touching that woman.”
Dwight sighed. “I know that, but the people around here are starting to talk, Aidan. You know how it is here. People expect things. She’s talking about a fall wedding.”
He’d escorted her to exactly two events, both charity events where he’d networked all night long. He’d made it plain to her that they weren’t dating. When she had tried to come on to him and invite herself in, he’d been gentle and gracious about turning her down. It looked like he was going to have to be a bit more forceful. “I’ll talk to her when I get home, but that could be a week or two.”
There was a long pause. “Damn it, Aidan, what the hell is so all-fired important in Dallas?”
“Lexi.” He let the name drop like a jewel, his voice getting soft. He steeled himself because he wasn’t hiding anymore. Aidan O’Malley was done playing roles other people tried to force him to play. “And Lucas. I’m getting them back.”
A low whistle came across the line as the elevator doors opened, and Aidan started walking down the hall to his room. “Damn, Aidan, that’s going to cause a stir in this town. I don’t know that Deer Run, Texas, is ready for you and your, uhm, partners. Maybe if it was two hot chicks you were trying to bring home, it would be, you know, eccentric. They would say your time in Austin corrupted you. You know the church ladies here like to blame everything on marijuana and Austin.”
“Let them,” Aidan said sharply. “I don’t care. I love Lexi and I love Lucas, and I’m not hiding it or pretending it’s less than it is. If Deer Run, Texas, can’t handle it, then they can go to hell.”
He was damn sick of living up to other people’s expectations. He’d lost the best thing in his whole damn life because he couldn’t handle the potential fallout. He knew what real pain was now, and he knew that the only thing that healed it was genuine, pure love for another human being. He’d been lucky enough to find two soul mates. He wasn’t letting them go because society deemed he was only allowed one. The world could go to hell as long as he had Lexi and Lucas in his life.
“Well, I admire you for your conviction, Aidan. I hope it doesn’t bite your ass in the end.” Dwight was silent for a moment and then seemed almost hesitant. “Are you sleeping okay, buddy?”
Aidan stood beside the door to his room and felt his soul sag. “Sure.”
“That doesn’t sound reassuring.”
He sighed and decided that honesty was the word of the whole damn day. He didn’t like talking about how he’d been injured, mostly because he couldn’t remember anything about the day. “Lately, I can’t seem to stop dreaming about it.”
“The doctors said you wouldn’t be able to remember that day, Aidan.”
“Well, they also said I wouldn’t walk.” They had been firm on that point. He’d been stubborn, and exactly six months after he’d been sentenced to life in a wheelchair, he’d stood up and walked. He’d walked because he loved them. They would never know it, but Lucas and Lexi had been his crutches, the very thought of them spurring him to walk. And they were going to be his reward. “It’s nothing, really. Just flashes of the team and the firefight. I don’t even know if what I’m seeing really happened. Probably not.”
But he wished it would go away. Every night, it was the same dream. Darkness and then that terrible sound. In the dream, he rushed out to see what was happening, and he felt the bullets hit him. Then just Dwight looking down at him. Aidan wanted it to stop.
“The dreams are coming even when you take your sleeping pills?”
Aidan groaned. “I didn’t bring them with me. I’m trying to get off of them.”
He hated the fact that he didn’t sleep well without them. He was going to break free of those pills. It was all a matter of discipline, but he knew Dwight disagreed. There was a long pause, and Aidan was happy when Dwight didn’t argue.
“How long will you be gone?” Dwight asked.
“Like I said, a week or two. Hire some more hands if you need it. The money is there. And tell Bo to keep his hands off the emergency funds. I’m not paying for his drinking binges.”
“Will do, boss. Tell me something, have you given any thought to bringing Lucas and Lexi here?”
He sighed. He would love that. “Only if I can figure out a way to drag them.”
He hung up his phone, opened the door, and started to get ready for the most important night of his life.
* * * *
Dwight Creely shoved his cell in his back pocket, cursing under his breath as he did it. He’d really thought he could get Aidan to come home. Aidan had explained to him how important these two people were to him. He understood that. When they were in the Army together, he’d talked about his ex-fiancée and their best friend. It was only after the incident that Aidan admitted he was involved with Lucas, too. Something had changed after Aidan had gotten out of the hospital. He had purpose. First, he’d fought hard to get back the use of his legs, and then he’d thrown himself into the ranch.
Dwight had stayed close, managing to get himself hired as the ranch’s foreman. He’d known a little about ranching having grown up in Wyoming. His uncle had a ramshackle ranch where Dwight had spent a couple of years after his father had kicked him out. It was a stroke of luck since he needed to stay close to A
idan. He had to keep a watchful eye on the big bastard.
“Hey!” Bo O’Malley swung down from the horse he’d been riding. It still surprised Dwight just how much the boy looked like his brother. Well, he looked like his brother before he’d gotten shot up in Iraq. Bo was a younger, slightly thinner version of Aidan, with sandy hair and a square jaw. “Have you talked to Aidan? Did you tell him Karen came around again? She tried to get me to tell her where Aidan went, but I didn’t think that was such a great idea. I don’t know what Aidan’s doing in Dallas, but he probably doesn’t want Karen around.”
Dwight hated Bo. Every word that came out of the younger man’s mouth was like nails on a chalkboard to Dwight. He’d been given everything, but he whined about how his brother didn’t pay enough attention to him. Spoiled little fucker. It was fun to come between him and his precious brother. A few words here and there and both brothers thought the other hated them. Dwight was glad he’d never been saddled with a sibling.
“I just talked to him. He’s pissed at you. He says the paperwork you did sucked, and he won’t let you near the business side again.” Aidan had said nothing of the sort, but those two didn’t talk, so there wasn’t a lot of worry that they would find out about his lie. They would simply yell at each other about other things, never getting to the heart of the matter. “You need to watch yourself. I think he’s close to getting rid of you. The only reason he’s kept you around is he doesn’t have money for new hands. You have to understand, your brother is trying to make this place work again. If you get in the way, he’ll cut you loose.”
“He can’t do that,” Bo insisted. “This is my home. He can’t kick me out.”
