“I was. It’s over. The staff is cleaning and sanitizing, and someone pointed out to me that a guest was raiding the liquor supply.” He set his hands on the decorative molding topping the short wall that separated the station from the dining room. “Tru, what’s wrong?”
Tru had a high tolerance for alcohol. She had a high tolerance for just about any drug or amount of pain. Chemo and many rounds of bone-marrow aspirations did that for a person. Alex had a similar capacity. They’d spent many nights together drinking too much alcohol and not noticing. She lifted the bottle of whiskey. “Want me to pour you a drink?”
“I’ll drink with you, but you’re going to have to talk to me.” He waited while she mixed a whiskey sour and handed it over. He held out a hand. “Let’s sit down.”
She took his hand and let him lead her to the nearest table. She set her drink down before sitting in the chair he pulled out for her. “What do you want to talk about?”
He assumed the chair next to her and sipped his drink. “You always pour a strong drink. This is why you can’t be a bartender.”
His short-sleeved shirt showed off his arms, and Tru noticed a tattoo that hadn’t been there the last time. In fancy script, it said Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. That wasn’t something Tru had ever done. She’d subverted her dreams into dares and dangerous sports. She traced a finger over the quote.
“Like that? Jewell found it for me. She wants kids.”
Like Tru, Alex couldn’t have kids. Chemo and radiation had messed with their reproductive parts. If Tru had been older, they would have banked her eggs for later use, but she had been too young that first time around. Tru nodded. “Four.” She’d seen it in a vision.
Alex started. “She told you?” He shook his head. “We’re not here to talk about my problems. We’re here to talk about yours. Why are you sitting in a dimly lit room draining my liquor supply? Where are Liam and Jed?”
She shrugged. “We had a fight. They left.”
His face darkened. “What the hell? They abandoned you?”
“No. The car is in the parking lot and their clothes are still in the room. Liam was mad, and Jed went after him. I hurt them, Alex. I didn’t mean to, but I did. I shouldn’t have come here with them.” She sipped more of her drink, letting the sour heat and cold spread through her chest. “But then you wouldn’t have let them have a room, and a murderer would go free. I couldn’t let that happen.” She faced Alex. “I never loved anybody before.”
He nodded. “I know. I was shocked—happily shocked—when you wanted to bring them here, and so was Jewell. I mean, it’s a big deal if you want me to meet someone you’re dating. You have never introduced me to a boyfriend on purpose.”
“I didn’t know I loved them. I thought it was just a fling. It started that way, a couple nights of fun. It wasn’t supposed to be more.” She drained her glass, but when she rose to refill it, Alex stopped her with a firm hand on her arm.
“Let’s wait a little while before you have more. You were telling me about falling in love for the first time.”
She relaxed, and he released her arm. “They were mad because I didn’t tell them about you, that you trained me. And about Jewell, how it started out as a threesome.”
He washed a hand down his face. “Christ. I never thought you’d bring a Dom here without telling him everything. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. I thought I was just confirming what they already knew.”
“Nope. I didn’t tell them anything. It wasn’t supposed to be serious.”
“But it became serious anyway.”
She fished an ice cube from the bottom of her glass and crunched it between her teeth. “I don’t know how to do serious. What if they fall in love with me and I die?” She wasn’t counting the days until her cancer returned, but she fully expected it to make a third and final appearance in her life. This time, she wouldn’t be so successful in fighting it.
Alex shrugged. “So what if they do? What if you don’t die, and you live happily ever after?”
Closing her eyes against the idea that falling in love with her would bring pain to Liam and Jed, she shook her head. “I’m not that lucky.”
“It’s not about luck. It’s about living your life to the fullest. I’m not talking about jumping off a bridge. I’m talking about taking the chance that you might, in fact, have a future with two men who love you.”
She didn’t know if their feelings ran that deep. This was her greatest fear—falling in love. She was fine with falling from a plane, balloon, bridge, or cliff, but she was terrified of falling in love because she didn’t think she could survive losing it. “I need another drink.”
Alex got it for her. “This is your last one.”
“Then make it a double.” She might have slurred her words.
He chuckled. “So what did you say when they told you they were mad?”
She didn’t remember saying much of anything. The alcohol was beginning to have an effect. Time stuttered, and when Alex set down her glass, she had a hard time getting her hand to it. All of a sudden, she realized she hadn’t talked to Poppy in a couple of days. “I miss Poppy. I love her so much. She’s my best friend. An’ I love you too because you’re my other best friend.”
“You’re wasted. Tell me what you said to Liam and Jed to make them leave.”
He just assumed she’d shot off her mouth? Why? That wasn’t how she operated. “Did I tell you that I found a dead body?”
Alex’s eyes opened wider. “No. Where? When?”
“A little over a week ago. That’s how I met them.” She dropped her volume to a whisper. “They’re FBI agents, cuz I found a murdered body. It was so horrible.”
He sipped his drink, though not much disappeared from the glass. “Are they investigating the couple you asked me to let stay here?”
“Yep. They’re murderers and prolly do other bad things. Don’t know what, but it’s the FBI, ya know? They don’t do local murder stuff.” Before she knew what was happening, the entire story poured forth. It was most likely disjointed and there was no way parts of it made sense.
Alex, in his patient way, listened to her talk and asked questions when she skipped over parts. By the time she finished talking, she found herself back in the room Alex had given her with no memory of how she’d come to be there. The ceiling spun, and she yearned for Liam and Jed to hold her until it stopped.
“I love them.” She heard herself talking, but the sound seemed to come from someone else who might have been under water or at the other end of a long tunnel. “They’re good men. Liam is kind of crazy like me. We’re gonna find Bigfoot. It’s gonna happen. Jed is so easy to talk to. I told him my secret that I didn’t even tell you.”
Alex was doing something by her feet. “What secret is that?”
“Nope. I’m not gonna tell you. Just Jed. He understands. Maybe Liam. Jed says that Liam will understand, but I don’t know yet.” She looked at the spinning ceiling. “Whattaya doin with my feet?”
“Taking off your shoes. I’m thinking you’ll pass out after you tell me your secret.”
She sat up suddenly and tried to figure out which image of Alex was the real one. “Four kids, Alex. Get ready because it’s gonna happen soon.”
The two images of Alex frowned. “You know I can’t have kids.”
“Adoption. I seen it.” She closed her eyes and willed the memory of the vision forward. “The older two look Hispanic and the other two are mixed race. The littlest one is a pistol. She’s running around in circles like a puppy, just laughing and laughing. Four kids. So there.”
The spinning of the room exponentially increased, and the next time she was aware of anything, she was on her knees in front of a toilet. Alex pressed a cold cloth to her neck. “Think there’s anything left?”
Her stomach still felt queasy, but at least the room had stopped spinning. “I wanted to kneel for them.”
He shifted, adjusting his grip of her hair. “
That’s great. I’m sure you’ll get a chance to do that soon.” He flushed away evidence of her last bout of sick and helped her to the sink so she could rinse her mouth.
She did that, and then she burst into tears. “What if they never come back? Maybe I chased them away because I didn’t want to love them.”
“Nobody who loves you would leave you. Your relationship is less than two weeks old.”
He was right. She followed him into the room and let him put her to bed. “What if they’re dead?” Her eyes wouldn’t stay open, but the nagging worry wouldn’t leave. Her tears came faster. “What if the bad guys killed them? I don’t want to lose them Alex. I never loved anybody before. I was afraid. I was stupid.”
He hugged her and made soothing noises, and that’s the last thing she remembered.
Chapter Twenty
Dawn broke, a glimmer of light through the trees that reminded Liam of how much it sucked to spend the night on surveillance duty on the edge of a cliff. Oh, wait—they didn’t have cliffs like this in southeastern Michigan, and sitting in a dark van for days on end was not a fit comparison. He missed the creature comforts of his computer-filled office.
“I don’t think they’re coming out.” Jed’s voice was rusty from disuse.
“Or there’s another exit.” Liam peered over the edge once more. “We’re going to need some gear. Flashlight. Map. I hope to fucking God there’s a map of this cave system.”
“You think it’s a whole system?” Jed stood up and stretched.
“It fits with the geology of the area. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a network of caves and passageways.” He sighed. “It was too much to hope they’d come out the way they went in.”
Jed nodded. “Let’s head back. We need to report in, refuel, find some helmets with the flashlight on the front. See if Tru is still speaking to either of us.”
“She probably needs another spanking.” Liam was thinking about the way she’d challenged him last night. If he didn’t watch out, her insubordination was going to become a habit. “It seemed to work last time.”
“The three of us need to sit down and talk.” Jed yawned and shook his head, and he led the way back to the inn. “We need to know if she’s willing to take the next step.”
“A collar?” There were a number of “next steps” that could be taken from this point. A collar, even if it took the form of a necklace or ring, was the one that appealed to Liam the most.
“Or even just seeing us again. That would be forward progress.” Jed chuckled. “Christ. I never thought I’d want to be in a serious relationship. I’ve never had this problem before. Usually I’m planning an exit strategy at this point. I mean, yeah, we threw around the idea of a casual relationship, but this isn’t the same thing.”
They trudged the rest of the way in silence. The room was quiet and dark when they entered. Liam turned on the bathroom light, and a glance at the bed showed Tru sound asleep. The noise from the sofa nearly had him reaching for his weapon, which would have been pointless because he’d left it in the room.
Alex sat up and threw off a blanket. “You’re back. Great.” He stood up, stretched, and scratched his stomach. “Damn, I hate sleeping on couches. They’re too short to get comfortable.”
Liam blinked. Part of him had not processed the fact that Alex had spent the night in his room.
“What are you doing here?” Jed parked his hands on his hips, somehow managing to come off as both friendly and menacing.
“Tru had a rough night. She drank most of my whiskey, but in the end, she gave most of it back. Of course it’s no longer salable, so it’s still a loss.” He made a face, possibly at the memory of Tru vomiting up what she’d drunk. “She passed out at around three.”
Liam glanced at her, asleep and oblivious. “So you stayed here with her?”
“Like I said, she was in rough shape. Listen, I’m going to say something because not only is this my home and my place of business, but Tru is one of my oldest friends. First, I don’t like that you lied to me. If you needed to come here to catch a murderer, I would have found space for you, opened my records, and worked with you however you needed me to. I want nothing more than for my wife and guests to be safe here. I don’t appreciate you using my friend in order to get in here to conduct a clandestine sting operation.” He came closer and poked Liam in the chest. “She may appear strong, but she’s hiding a very fragile side. You left her alone when she was most vulnerable, and that is not cool. If you want to be her Dom, you can’t abandon her just because you had an argument. She’s misguided, emotional, and unaccountably stubborn, but that doesn’t mean you can’t break her heart.”
“We didn’t break her heart.” Jed sidled up to Alex, letting him know that if he wanted to go up against Liam, then he was also going to have to get through Jed. “She’s not emotionally invested in this.”
Alex, to his credit, didn’t back down. He turned his steely stare to Jed. “She said you were smart, but from that statement, I’m thinking she’s mistaken. She would not have brought you here—no matter the circumstances—if she wasn’t emotionally invested. Most of the decisions Tru makes are based on emotion and intuition. Nobody would ever accuse her of being driven by logic.”
Liam’s heart thumped with joy. In her much too detailed, drunken confession, Tru had disclosed her feelings for them to her friend. Backing down a hair, Liam exhaled hard. “She told you who we are and why we’re here?”
The abrupt change in subject threw Alex off for a second. The inn’s owner scowled. “You should have told me that you were Federal agents.”
Liam wasn’t inclined to agree. “The fewer people who know about us, the better our chances of keeping our cover intact. If the suspects know who we are, they’ll flee, and we don’t have enough evidence to make an arrest.”
Jed put a hand on Alex’s shoulder. “However it’s good to know you’ll cooperate with our investigation. Are you aware of the cave system under this place?”
Alex didn’t look surprised at the question. “Yeah. This place was built for bootlegging. There’s a sealed entrance in the cellar. Is that where you were all night? You have to be careful down there. It’s dark and dangerous, especially at high tide, and it’s easy to get lost.”
Jed’s eyes lit. “You know your way around? Can you make a map?”
“My heart was never healthy enough for that kind of exertion, but Tru knows them pretty well. She learned spelunking down there.”
Of course the woman who loved skydiving and base jumping would know how to rappel down cave walls. However that solution didn’t sit right with Liam. “I’d rather not take her when we don’t know what we’ll find. There has to be somebody else who can guide us.”
“There is, but it would take at least a week to get him to come here. His granddaughter is getting married today—in Spain.” Tru sat up, and she whispered as if the sound of her voice was physically painful. “Did you just now get back?”
“Yeah, Princess. We didn’t mean to be out all night, but we followed Schatz and Braithwaite to a hidden opening to a cave. We waited for them to come out, but they didn’t.” Jed shot Liam a warning look.
Alex looked between the two of them. “They showed up at the Voyeur/Exhibitionist event at around ten-thirty. They stayed for a few minutes, and then they went back to their room.”
“I saw them come out of the kitchen.” Tru swayed and laid back down. “Don’t know what time. Thought they were raiding for snacks, but if they were in the caves, they probably came up that way.”
“I sealed that entrance years ago.” Alex snagged a bottle of water from the mini-fridge and handed it to Tru. “Drink this slowly.”
“Jewell and I were messing around in the cellar the summer before last, and we found out that the door you put up opened even when it looked like it was locked.” Without opening her eyes, Tru sat up enough to sip water. “Can one of you get me something for this headache?”
“Messing around?”
Liam wasn’t inclined to give her aspirin until she’d eaten something. “What does that mean?”
“I have a hangover, Liam. I’m not in the mood to deal with your petty jealousies right now.”
“You have to eat something first so it doesn’t tear up your stomach.” He crossed his arms and convinced himself to abandon that line of questioning. She was right—he needed to not get caught up in things that happened in her past. If she’d left them there, then he had no reason to drag them into the present.
“They were canning.” Alex supplied an answer. “They’d picked tons of strawberries, tomatoes, blueberries, and I don’t know what else. They spent a week in the kitchen, and we still have some preserves left.” He headed toward the door. “I’ll have the kitchen send breakfast to the room. I think the three of you have quite a conversation ahead.”
The door closed behind him, and the three were silent for many long seconds. Finally Jed cleared his throat. “Tru, we need to talk. We were about to come back last night when I saw Schatz and Braithwaite skulking around. We had to follow them.”
Her eyelids cracked open a minimal amount. “I’m just glad you’re not dead. How about sending a text if it should happen again?”
Liam wasn’t sure about the procedure here. Jordan probably would have texted Amy if she’d expected him home and he couldn’t make it. Still, there might be a circumstance where he wouldn’t be able to send a message without fear of ruining the operation. He settled on a compromise. “If we can, then we will.”
“Thank you.” Her eyes had closed again.
Liam slid an arm under her shoulders, perched on the edge of the bed, and leaned her against him. “Drink your water.”
Moving incrementally, she lifted the bottle to her lips and tipped it up.
“Princess, we’re in love with you.”
Her eyes flew open and she spilled water down the front of her corset. The sheet absorbed most of the flow before Liam took control of the water bottle. She sat up, looking between him and Jed with bleary, bloodshot eyes. She was a beautiful mess.
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