CHASING PEPPER (Gray Wolf Security, Texas Book 5)

by Glenna Sinclair

  She was quiet for a long minute. “What do you think of her? Do you like her?”

  David gave himself a second to think about it. He couldn’t help but remember seeing her talking to Nolan in the workroom this morning. As much as that concerned him—since he really didn’t want her getting involved with one of his operatives—he was grateful to have her here, to have her help in keeping things sane in his private life.

  “She’s great with Chase. And she’s conscientious with you. She went to the library and got you something to look at besides the television.”

  “She did?”

  “And she learned all about your diet and has been making your meals herself the last day or two.”

  “Really?”

  “And she has Chase convinced that you’re on bed rest because you’re a superhero who must give up your powers in order to give birth to the new baby safely.”

  Ricki laughed. “She told him that?”

  “She did. And he thinks it’s the greatest thing in the world.”

  Ricki shook her head. “Alright, I get it. She’s been a big help.”

  “I checked her out, babe. If I thought she was bringing trouble into this house, I would be the first to send her packing.”

  “I know. And I love you for that.”

  “Is that the only reason you love me?”

  She groaned as she rolled into him. “I love that you took a shower. You smell so good!”

  “Yeah? What else?”

  She slid her hand slowly down the length of his chest, his belly. “I love that you have the smarts to come to bed naked even though I’m on bed rest and I’m not supposed to get too excited.”

  “Yes, but the doctor said sex is very relaxing.”

  She groaned. “You are right about that.”

  He rolled into her, his mouth sliding over hers. She sighed against him, turning so that she was presenting her back to him. When he entered her, she moaned softly, a sound he knew much too well and loved more than anything he’d ever heard. They rocked together slowly, losing themselves in each other, remembering how precious these quiet, close moments really were.

  “I love you,” she moaned again, clutching his wrist as she rushed toward her orgasm. Afterward, he held her, memories of their past unfolding in his mind. He couldn’t begin to express how grateful he was for her coming into his life, how happy he was that she’d shaken up his world and turned it on end, forcing him to do the things he’d been too guilt ridden, too proud, to do before she stormed into his life. He owed her more than just gratitude. He owed his legs, his independence, and the family he’d thought he’d never have again.

  He owed her the same gifts she’d given him. He owed her a relationship with her sister.

  Chapter 10

  Nolan

  I watched her come down the path, not really surprised. I’d been thinking about her. Maybe my thoughts had somehow conjured her, bringing her to me when we both should have been headed off to our own beds.

  “Evening,” she said with a smile.

  I held up my bottle of beer. “Would you like one?”

  “Sure,” she said, that pretty smile bringing a dimple to her narrow cheek.

  I got up and stepped into the cottage, grabbing another bottle from the fridge. She was settled on the top step of my porch across from where I’d been sitting when I came back, her face dark with worry clouds until she saw me. She smiled again, but the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes.

  I wanted to ask if everything was okay, but I felt like it wasn’t really my business. Instead, I returned to the spot where I’d been before, sitting on the front step of my porch, watching the moon float innocently in the night sky, the cool November breeze chilling the bare skin on my arms.

  “It’s nice here. Quiet.” I inclined my head slightly. “Warmer this time of the year than where I grew up.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Virden, Illinois. It’s a little farm town about thirty minutes north of Springfield.”

  “Get a lot of snow out there?”

  “Some years. Not usually until after Christmas though.”

  “I heard Kipling grew up in Illinois, too.”

  “Yeah? Small world.”

  I shrugged, taking a long swallow of my beer. She played with the label on hers, not really drinking out of it, but holding it like a prop in a play.

  “Where are you from?” she asked, glancing at me, catching me watching her. “Around here?”

  “Sort of.” I glanced toward the main house, watching the lights go out in one of the second-floor rooms, imagining it was David and Ricki’s room, that they’d just decided to call it a night. “We moved around a lot, following the rodeo circuit. Mostly south and central Texas, Oklahoma, some New Mexico. We went to California a few times and Las Vegas once.”

  “Your daddy ride?’

  “Yeah. Broncs.”

  “That must have been quite an interesting childhood.”

  I took another swallow of my beer, remembering the many times I’d watched my dad get thrown from a bronc, wondering if he’d open his eyes when they pulled him out of the arena. Wondering if this was the time he would be dead or brain damaged and I’d be put in the foster care system.

  “Met a lot of interesting characters, that’s for sure.”

  “Did you ever ride?”

  “Yeah. Won a buckle in the juvenile bronc-riding division when I was twelve.”

  “Impressive.”

  I shook my head. “Not really. Most of the other kids I was competing against were pampered kids of the officials, kids who lived normal lives when they weren’t being sent into the arena by overly eager parents.”

  “Did you ever consider following in your dad’s footsteps?”

  “Sure, sure.” Another swallow of beer. “But then I remembered all the broken bones, all the hospitals and the concussions. All the warnings that if he didn’t quit, he’d suffer permanent damage.”

  She finally took a drink there, my words striking a chord that I didn’t really understand. We both fell quiet for a few minutes, only the sound of the night settling around us to fill the silence.

  “What about you?” I finally asked. “You grew up in Illinois. How did you end up out here?”

  Another smile twisted her lips, but this one was a wry one.

  “I’m a bit of a fuckup,” she said softly, picking at the beer bottle’s label again. “I was accepted to Northwestern out of high school—full ride. But I dropped out after two semesters. Then I got a job as a waitress, a job as a secretary, and another…I washed cars for a while. Then I went back to school—state university this time with my mom footing the bill. I lasted only a single semester that time. Just didn’t like the structure, the expectations. Then I moved through a few more jobs, got myself in trouble several times until I ended up in Dallas to hang out with a friend from high school. And that led me here.”

  “Sounds like you just haven’t decided what you want to do with your life yet.”

  She nodded, lifting the bottle to her lips again. “Yeah, well, you’d think by the age of twenty-five I’d have it all figured out. I mean, look at you and Ricki and David. At everyone else here. We’re all pretty close in age, right? Give five years here and there?”

  “I suppose.”

  “You’ve all got your lives figured out. You and the other operatives are all retired military. I heard that Knox was CIA, too.”

  “I heard that.”

  “And David was an FBI analyst before he went to work for his dad. And Kipling. He was some sort of officer, right?”

  “That’s the rumor.”

  “And Ricki owned her own social media website by the time she was twenty-five, after enjoying a career as a hacker that was so impressive that people still talk about and try to emulate her code today.”

  “You can’t compare yourself to other people. They had different experiences than you.”

  “Yes, well, Ricki and I grew up in the same hou
se. Granted, she escaped long before I did, but she did so much in such a small amount of time.”

  “She’s a different person.”

  She took another long swallow of her beer. “She thinks I’m a loser, like our mother.”

  “Your mother?”

  She rolled her shoulders. “She is the kind of woman who doesn’t like to be alone. She doesn’t like the stress of having to work for a living, doesn’t like having to raise her kids alone. She’ll marry any guy who has a good job and nice home. That’s how she met my dad. Her first husband—Ricki’s father—died in a car accident. She married my dad six months later. Then, when my dad died of cancer, she married a neighbor who treated her like crap, but had a paid-off house.”

  “Is she still married to him?”

  “No. She left him after six months and moved on to the doctor she’d been having an affair with. They’re still together, though he hasn’t bothered to leave his wife.”

  “Sounds like a match made in heaven.”

  She chuckled, a bitter little laugh that seemed strange coming from her pretty lips. She lifted the bottle to her mouth again, swallowing a healthy swig.

  “My mom wasn’t much better. She dumped me on my dad when I was three, but she never bothered to tell him that I existed until that moment. She’d met a man who didn’t want to raise someone else’s kid, so she got rid of me and gave him three perfect little girls. They’re still living happily in Oklahoma City.”

  “Sounds like a princess of a woman.”

  “Yeah. She’s something.”

  “Do you see her much?”

  “She came to my high school graduation. Even stood and talked civilly to my dad. But I couldn’t even look at her.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “The way I look at it, he wasn’t the greatest dad in the world, but he did the best he could. At least he tried. She just gave up.”

  “That’s true.”

  She finished her beer, setting the bottle on one of the lower steps. Then she slid over, moving close to me, her hand sliding over my thigh. “I guess I should be grateful I grew up with both parents, even if it meant watching my father beat the crap out of my brother and my mom on nearly a daily basis.”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “I know. I just…my brother keeps telling me that I was lucky that my dad never laid a hand on me like he did him, like he did my mom and Ricki. He tells me that I have no right to be so fucked up because I didn’t experience what they did. But the thing is…he never touched me. He never hit me like he did them; he never came to my bed at night and made me cry like he did Ricki. But he also never looked at me, never spoke to me. He never acknowledged my presence, as if he’d decided that I no longer existed. That’s how it felt, like I was a ghost floating through the house, invisible to everyone but my friends at school.”

  There was pain dripping from her words. I touched her hand, pulling it tight against my thigh.

  “I see you.”

  She looked at me. “You do, don’t you?”

  She leaned into me, kissing me almost roughly. I buried my fingers in her thick, dark hair, pulling her as close to me as she could come, sliding inside of her mouth as though I had every right to possess her. That was the thing. I really wanted to possess her. I wanted to know everything about her; I wanted to make every part of her a part of me. Those beautiful women at Tilford Technology today, those women on those security tapes…none of them had been enough to push Pepper from my thoughts. From the first moment I saw her, lying there on the path, cursing at the rose bush, she was under my skin. I hadn’t felt this way…well, I thought I felt this way once before. But maybe this wasn’t what that was. Maybe this was more than that. Maybe this was more than everything I’d ever known before.

  And that scared me.

  I broke the kiss, pressing my forehead to hers.

  “I shouldn’t.”

  “Why not?” she asked softly.

  “Because you’re the sister-in-law of my boss?”

  She chuckled again. “Oh, yeah. There is that.”

  “Yeah.”

  She pulled back, sliding along the step again. “I guess I should go, then.”

  “You don’t have to rush off.”

  She looked over at me, and then this dirty smile reached her eyes. “Yeah, I think I do.”

  I nodded, a little smile touching my own lips.

  She stood, brushing her hands over the back of her jeans. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll skip our run in the morning. Getting Chase up and ready for preschool is handful enough.”

  “Okay.”

  She leaned down and brushed her lips over mine for a second. Then she was gone, headed back to the house at a slow jog. I watched her, every muscle in my body tensed to get up and chase after her. But I stayed where I was, content to just watch.

  But I wasn’t sure just how long I would be content to do that.

  Chapter 11

  At the Compound

  Ricki watched David move around the room, admiring everything about him, from the way the muscles in his back worked to the way his long legs flexed and stretched. She wanted to get up and join him in the shower, but she’d been lying in this damn bed for so long that standing for longer than a few minutes was just too much. Not to mention the fact that the doctor wouldn’t allow her on her feet for longer than it took to visit the porcelain throne.

  She hated this. She hated being restricted to the bed, hated being left so vulnerable, so dependent on other people. She wanted her freedom again. She wanted to be able to sit at her desk and work on her own projects. She wanted to be able to get her own meals from her own kitchen and take a spontaneous shower with her husband without putting the life of their child at risk.

  She rolled over, the biggest trip she was allowed to take, and flipped on the television. She was pretending to be deeply involved in the lives of the Kardashians when David came out of the bathroom, smelling all masculine from the soap and cologne he’d just put on. He bent over her, his lips brushing her temple.

  “You okay, babe?”

  “Bored to death and ready to have this over with, but yeah.”

  He smiled. “I know it’s hard, but it’ll only be a few more weeks.”

  “Just under three months. That’s not just a few weeks.”

  “It’ll fly by, darlin’.”

  She groaned, but she turned into him when he kissed her again.

  “Love you,” he whispered against her lips. And those words never failed to make her heart flutter just as they had the first time.

  She’d been so afraid to give a man the power over her that came with such a deep, intense love. Maybe that was why she’d chosen to take him into her bed. Maybe that was why the sight of him in a wheelchair had taken that bit of resistance away. A man in a wheelchair couldn’t hurt her the way her stepfather had. But then he had the surgery, and it changed everything.

  She remembered watching him during his rehab, hiding so he couldn’t see her. She saw him struggle and saw him grow stronger. And she knew. She’d made a mistake walking away from him. If there was ever a man in the world she could trust, it was David. If he hadn’t come back to her…

  “I don’t deserve you,” she said softly, touching the side of his face.

  He smiled that charming smile he’d always had, the smile that made her bones turn to water.

  “You deserve so much better,” he said, “but I’m glad you settled for me.”

  He kissed her again, then slipped away. From the doorway, he turned back to smile again.

  “I’ll send Pepper up with your breakfast.”

  Ricki groaned, suddenly reminded of her situation. It was nice to forget for an instant, but it couldn’t last forever.

  She curled up on her side, her hand sliding over her swollen belly. The baby responded, twisting and stretching, pushing at her flesh from the inside like it was meant to be pliable. She moaned softly as the kid hit a particularly sore spot. She
’d never imagined she’d have children and never imagined she would enjoy being pregnant. She wasn’t enjoying it as much this time, but there was something about the movement of the baby that made her feel a certain measure of joy. She couldn’t wait to meet this little person. Couldn’t wait to hold him or her in her arms.

  She couldn’t wait to get the hell out of this bed!

  Pepper came through the door carrying a tray laden down with berries and bacon and eggs, the low carb breakfast she was restricted to because of her unstable blood sugars. She wanted to throw it across the room and watch the berries stain the wallpaper, imagining it would look more appetizing there than on that tray.

  “Morning,” Pepper said quite happily.

  “Did Chase get off to preschool okay?”

  “Fine. He gave me a picture to give to you.”

  Pepper set the tray down and handed her a hand-drawn picture of a little boy in a school uniform. It matched half a dozen others he’d sent to her, his little reminders that he still existed.

  “Thank you,” Ricki said almost curtly, struggling to maintain some sort of pleasantry between herself and her sister even though what she really wanted to do was to scream and toss her out of her house. She hadn’t seen her for seventeen years, and then she suddenly arrives, taking over her role as mother to her much beloved son. It was growing harder and harder to be polite.

  Pepper helped Ricki sit up, her hands gentle under her upper arms. Then she settled the tray and took a seat in a chair beside the bed, watching the antics take place on the television. Ricki wasn’t hungry. She picked at the food, finding herself glancing at Pepper more and more.

  “I spoke to Terry,” she informed her.

  Pepper just nodded.

  “Hadn’t spoken to him in fifteen years. But he didn’t seem surprised to hear from me.”

  “I texted him. Let him know where I was.”

  “The two of you are that close?”