For the Love of Beard

by Lani Lynn Vale

  "What's all this?"

  The wall had hundreds of pushpins and strings. Hastily scribbled notes on any piece of paper I could find interspersed throughout the messy web.

  "That," I said, "is my sightings wall."

  "Sightings of what?" she asked, her eyes wide as she took everything in.

  "Sightings of the woman that’s said to be pregnant with my brother’s child."

  Her brows rose.

  "From the brother we saw the other day?"

  I shook my head. "No, this one is Dante. The one you saw the other day was Finley."

  Her lips pursed into a Cupid’s bow. One that I wanted really badly to kiss.

  "Why are you looking for her, and not your brother?"

  I really, really didn't want to get into my brother’s problems right then. They were numerous.

  Some of them were heartbreaking, and despite what my brother thought, his heart wasn't the only one broken.

  Hell, I hadn't seen him since he checked in on me months ago after I was shot. And even then it was merely a 'you look okay' check in.

  He'd stayed for less than five minutes and then was gone.

  Then again, if my wife and children had been killed like his had, I might be unwilling to mingle with society either.

  "Because he won't."

  My tone was final and a little more surly than I intended it to come out.

  But this subject wasn't one I wanted to talk about. At all.

  She obviously picked up on that, too, because she quickly asked a different question.

  "How many brothers do you have?"

  I grinned. "Five."

  "Sisters?"

  My stomach clenched.

  "None anymore. They both died."

  She must've sensed the anger there, too, because she sighed and looked away.

  "Do you want me to shut up?"

  My lips twitched, and I sighed.

  "No." I blew out another breath. "My family is fucked up times six. Seriously, all six of us boys have fucking problems, and none of them are even remotely fixed yet."

  She turned and looked at me with these hauntingly green eyes.

  "You don't look damaged."

  The laugh that bubbled out of my throat was harsh. It hid the scream of anguish that wanted to slip from my throat at how fucked up I was. How unstable I was when I thought about all the things I’d done wrong in my life.

  On the outside, I may look undamaged. But if it was possible to see to the heart of a person, mine would look torn, mangled and bruised.

  "I watched my sister kill herself."

  Her mouth fell open at the abruptness in my tone.

  "Tobias..."

  I held up a hand, already shaking my head. "It's okay."

  She shook her head in denial. "No, it's not."

  She was right. It wasn't. That didn’t change the fact that she was gone, though.

  "Well, as of right now, it's as okay as it will ever get."

  She knew when a subject was closed, obviously, because she just shook her head and walked away, leaving me staring at a wall that was my effort to atone for my sins.

  My way to make things right.

  After all, I’d made my sister a promise as I held her rapidly cooling hand.

  "You make sure to help him," she’d whispered. "Please, make it right."

  Dante had asked my sister to drive his family home when he was called in for an emergency at work. My sister had.

  However, what Dante didn't know was that my sister was under the influence of drugs. She'd been exceptionally good at hiding her usage.

  Hell, I hadn't even known she'd been using, and I saw her every week like clockwork.

  Dante had entrusted our sister with his wife and children’s lives.

  Instead of admitting that she was under the influence, she'd driven them to save face.

  And in the process of driving them home, she'd lost control of the car, driving them off a bridge and into the river that was twenty feet below.

  The only one who had made it out alive without drowning had been my sister, and we still weren't sure how she'd survived it. The drugs, maybe. We really weren't sure.

  But that was my fault too. I hadn't protected her.

  If I had to make a guess, she started using to hide from the pain after the man I used to call my best friend had hurt her.

  And when she woke up in the hospital, I knew from the look on her face that she was going to try something.

  So I'd watched her. Spent so much time with her that she couldn't do what I saw in her eyes that she wanted to do.

  She'd been heartbroken. Plus, with the accident, and it being her fault, she’d been clean and sober since the accident, causing me to finally start backing off. Which had been a colossal mistake.

  She gotten dressed up. Acted like she was going out on a date. Had gone on a date. Except she'd ended it early, and I hadn't realized it.

  Then she'd gone home, wrote a note to Dante and me, and had overdosed on a bottle of pills that she’d stolen from my medicine cabinet.

  Then she'd cleaned up after herself. Started a load of laundry, and then had gone to her bed.

  When I'd arrived at her place an hour later, it was to find the note on the counter.

  After I read the first few lines, I immediately started running toward her bedroom. I'd arrived in time to watch her take a few labored breaths in between telling me her wishes for Dante before she died in my arms.

  “I’d offer to help you, but it looks like you have your ducks in a row.” Audrey broke into my thoughts. “If you ever need anything, I’m here.”

  I squeezed her hand, grateful that she’d changed the subject on me, and returned to the bed to retrieve my weapon.

  Once I had it on my person, I covered it up with my t-shirt. Once my shirt was in place, I looked over at Audrey still standing at the sightings wall and studied her.

  “You ready?”

  She nodded.

  “Well then, let’s go,” I rumbled.

  “You’re sure?” She was looking at me like I was going to self-destruct. “I don’t want to go that bad.”

  ***

  She started to type, and again she nodded her head.

  “The only cabins I have, mid-level and mid ship, are the ones with queen sized beds. However, if you choose, we can separate them into twins. You’ll just need to make sure that you specify that on the instructions tab on the site right there.”

  The travel agent pointed to where the tab was on my own computer, and I nodded.

  “Okay,” I grunted, turning to the woman that’d been particularly quiet throughout the entire appointment. “Is that okay with you?”

  Audrey shrugged. “I can close the bathroom door. As for sharing the bed, that’s fine with me as well. We’re both adults.”

  I looked at her, studying her sincerity, and then turned back to the woman.

  “All right,” I leaned back in my chair. “That’s how it’s going to be.”

  The travel agent’s smile was almost giddy as she signed us up, and I idly wondered how much commission she was getting off of the sale. I’d met one cop going in, and one cop had come in sometime during our meeting with her.

  She was going to make a killing on just law enforcement.

  “Alrighty, then.” She grinned. “Let’s get this booked.”

  Ten minutes later, we were walking out of the door with a pamphlet full of shore excursions in our hands, and a hunger that was gnawing at our insides.

  Chapter 6

  Oh, Fuck.

  -Words whispered by every single person at least once throughout the day.

  Tobias

  There was something wrong with me.

  I couldn’t get my head on straight.

  Everything I did came with a small voice in my head saying, ‘What’s Audrey doing? What will Audrey think about this arrest that you just made when yo
u tell her about it later on? Do you think Audrey is doing anything right now that you can’t stop by and see her?’

  I couldn’t seem to shut off the thoughts that centered around the one woman that I knew should be protected from me.

  Yet, here I was, driving over to her place when I should be going to my own home and staying the fuck away from her.

  When I pulled up outside Ghost’s house, I didn’t stop myself from going to the door.

  I knew Ghost was gone.

  I knew that he was out of town working on a case.

  I knew that his wife and daughters were gone, too.

  Meaning there was only one person in that house, and it was Audrey.

  I didn’t have any reason to believe that she’d want to come with me.

  In fact, she’d probably tell me not just no, but hell no.

  But I had to ask her anyway.

  Knocking on the door, I waited patiently for her to answer.

  It took her exactly two minutes to do it. How did I know that? Because I timed it.

  Jesus Christ, was I fucking lost.

  The door opened, and a tired looking Audrey answered the door.

  “Oh, hey!” she said, instantly perking up when she saw me. “Where are we going?”

  I looked down at her.

  She was wearing a pair of short, blue jean shorts, white ankle socks, and a pair of tennis shoes. The tank top she had on said ‘Butter Baby’ where it was stretched tightly across her ample breasts. My mind started running rapidly through all the things that I wanted to do to her that weren’t considered polite in general society.

  Things that she wasn’t ready for, and I wasn’t allowed to give her, according to Ghost.

  “How do you know we’re going anywhere?” I asked curiously.

  The fact that she wanted to go somewhere with me, even though she didn’t know where that was, was enough to make me to feel fucking giddy inside.

  “You don’t normally let me into the fun world you live in,” she grinned unrepentantly. “If you took me for a ride on your tractor, I’d be happy. Hell, you could even take me to the gun range.”

  My grin widened.

  “I guess I could do that,” I said slowly. “You want to ride on the tractor for real?”

  Even the gun range had sounded promising.

  She shrugged, but I could see that she really wanted to, so that’s exactly what we did.

  When I’d driven over here after work, I hadn’t really had a plan in mind. I hadn’t slept in over eighteen hours. I was tired, hungry, and more than a little frustrated with how my shift had gone. I’d only known that I wanted to spend some time with her once I got off, so I’d driven straight here instead of going home like I normally did.

  I was thinking I’d just ask her if she wanted to go shopping at the new fishing and hunting store that’d just opened or maybe go to the movies, but she’d solved that dilemma for me without even realizing it.

  “Where do you want to go to first?” I asked. “Though, I do have to go home to get some guns if we go shooting.”

  Just her grin was enough to send my heart rate skyrocketing.

  But add a glimpse of those pretty, white teeth behind those luscious, plump lips, and my dick was starting to get hard.

  I shifted, knowing that if I wasn’t careful, my pants would show every single dimple or lump. I’d been wearing the same uniform for years now. I knew better than to think about naughty things while I was wearing it.

  Her eyes skittered down the length of my body, and I shifted more so that one leg was forward, creating a little more space for my hardening-by-the-second cock to go.

  She looked away, a faint blush on her face, and I realized rather quickly that my excitement hadn’t gone unnoticed.

  “Should I change?” she asked, moving so she could peer around me at the road.

  I grinned.

  “No. I’ll go slow.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “I think I’ll put on jeans anyway, just in case.” She smiled happily.

  Then she disappeared, once again leaving the door open for me to either come in or stay on the porch. The fact that she left that decision up to me was enough to cause my heart to swell inside my chest.

  She was starting to trust me.

  All those months ago, when I’d first gone to get her for Ghost, she’d not only barred me from the bedroom when she was changing in the bathroom, but she also banished me from the house completely.

  I'd even had to sleep on the couch—which, might I add, made it hard to watch over the person when you couldn’t even be in the same room as her or you’d cause her to flip her crazy switch.

  Now, I could see that she’d left her bedroom door open as well.

  Progress. I had no clue that those little baby steps she was taking would feel as good as they did.

  “Hey!”

  I took the step into her house, and closed the door.

  “Yeah?” I stared down the hall, into the bedroom that still remained open.

  “I got a new piece of plastic, take a look. It’s on the table.”

  I walked to the table, which was a few steps in front of me, and looked at it.

  The entire table was scattered with papers. Some were the apartment background check forms that we’d picked up last week that she had filled out now.

  The rest of the papers were receipts, a recipe, and a phone bill with a phone number on it.

  Glancing at the number, I put it to memory and searched for the allusive plastic that she was talking about, finally finding it halfway under an envelope addressed to the electric company.

  Picking it up, I examined the photo, grinning when I saw that her hair was a little wild.

  Then the numbers on the card caught my eye.

  “You are not a hundred and seventy pounds!” I shouted as I read the concealed handgun license. “And your eyes aren’t hazel.”

  “Well, so I forgot what color my eyes were,” Audrey said as she came up behind me, startling me as she did. “And I’ll admit, I was a hundred and seventy five last week, but I plan to get back down to one seventy.”

  I opened my mouth, and then closed it, as I waffled on what to say to that.

  “I meant there’s no way you weigh that much,” I stuttered out. “You don’t look like you are. You look like you’re way skinnier…not that being that weight is a bad thing. You look amazing. Fuck, I’m just going to shut up now.”

  She started to laugh, and I got my first good look at the jeans that she was wearing. Or more like, the jeans that were wearing her.

  Jesus Christ, they were tight. And they fit her ass perfectly.

  They also had holes in them, placed sporadically in certain places so as not to show any parts of body that should be covered. Yet the holes were so well placed that they gave a glimpse of the skin leading to forbidden places.

  Such as the one that was on the back of one thigh. If I were to poke my finger through the hole, I’d be able to touch things that she probably wouldn’t want me touching.

  Then there was the one that was on the inside of her thigh.

  Jesus Christ.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  I looked her over.

  “Where’s your gun?”

  I figured since she now had her license, she would be carrying, but with her clothes as tight as they were, I couldn’t see how she could hide the gun even if she tried.

  Yet, I was curious.

  My curiosity always got me into trouble.

  “I don’t have a gun.” She looked away. “When I shot that guy who broke into my house…I decided I probably should get rid of that one. It had bad ju-ju.”

  I sighed. “Your brother has one.”

  She shrugged. “My brother’s already done a lot for me. I’m not going to continue to use him for my personal gain.”

  My lips twitched.

  “You can borrow one of mi
ne,” I offered.

  She lifted her chin slightly.

  “No.”

  Rolling my eyes, I handed her the license and said, “Make sure to keep that on you. If you get pulled over, be sure to hand them both licenses.”

  “Why?” she questioned.

  I hesitated. “Why not?”

  “What if I don’t have my gun on me? Why bother to pull out both?”

  I grinned at her. “If I pulled you over, and you only handed me your driver’s license, when I got back to my car and ran your name through the database, and noticed that you had a concealed carry license, I’d wonder why the hell you omitted that fact. Were you hiding something? Were you going to shoot me when I came back to your car to give you the ticket?”

  Her mouth opened, and then closed.

  “Maybe you’re just weird.”

  I chuckled as I headed for the door and held it open for her.

  She passed by me, touching me as she moved, and I knew it had been on purpose.

  There’d been quite a bit of room between me and the doorjamb, and she had ample room to move through without brushing against me from chest to crotch.

  She made sure to rub against me, and my already hard cock stiffened even more.

  “I’m not weird,” I said, trying to hide the need that was starting to leech into my voice. “I’m a cop. Cops already have to worry about everything under the sun. By you not giving me the license, it’s like you’re hiding it from me. Then all the situations we’ve been in, or our compatriots have been in, start to cycle through our brain. It’s little wonder that we can walk up to car windows at all without automatically pulling out our guns just in case.”

  She stayed silent as I held out my hand for her keys, and quickly locked the door behind us.

  She continued to stay quiet as we made our way down to my bike, where I offered her my only helmet.

  “You need to get one of these for yourself,” she mused as she placed the helmet on her head and tightened it.

  I grinned. “You keep riding on the back of my bike, baby, and I’ll do that.”

  Her smile was small, but that was nothing compared to the way she got onto the back of the bike behind me and wrapped her hands around my waist. Willingly.

  She pressed close, resting her chin on my shoulder, and gave me a little squeeze to tell me she was ready.