by Reina Torres
And it was that same Ranger who asked him to stay.
Blyss was the only one more surprised than Owen, but Conor was the one to explain.
“After what happened to you and Owen’s help in keeping you with us, we all agreed that he could be read into the situation.”
She could tell that Owen was pleased. Normally he would have waved off the idea of getting the scoop along with the others, but since the events of the day before, she knew he’d feel better if he was in the room with her and really, so did she.
Holding out her hand to him, she gestured for him to move to her side.
Blyss forgot all about the room full of people when he took her hand and leaned in close to her ear. “I’m just going to get a chair out of the bedroom.”
She held on tight to his hand so he couldn’t walk away. “Sit here.”
Oh, she saw him start to argue and that’s when she wet her lips and his attention froze, focused on her. Grinning, she tugged him closer. “I’m planning to use you for a cushion, Mr. Mercier. Got a problem with that?”
He kissed her cheek and purred into her ear. “Fuck no.”
Owen helped her stand and lifted her up into his arms and sat them both down together.
Blyss could see the myriad of reactions from everyone in the room, but there was definitely more than half of her friends who had a kind of relieved look on their faces. She knew it must seem strange to some of them. She was usually the lone single in the group, but they’d all seen Owen at work in a room, a magnet for woman on the prowl.
It must have been a strange sight indeed to have her sitting with Owen at all, but to have him sweep her up in his arms and sit her right down on his lap was going to earn her some questions later.
But she also knew that it felt great to have his arms around her.
The Texas Ranger leading the meeting was someone she’d only met at the taskforce meeting, so she was a little hesitant to be sitting in the room and knowing that she was now out of the game. Ranger Ellison pointed out a new member to the group. “I asked Trace Carson to come in. He’s familiar with the same areas that we’re targeting, and he’s got experience with part of the organization that we’re tracking.”
Owen tensed and Blyss lowered her hand down to rub against his knee. She’d told him about Miranda’s kidnapping before. Having yet another reminder of what could have happened to her must have struck home.
Ranger Ellison turned to Blyss. “Have you been able to remember anything more from the attack?”
She shook her head. “The only parts of the men that I saw were boots and jeans. Once I took that first bullet in the back of my vest, I was pretty much like a turtle stuck face down as if they’d turned me over on my shell.”
Conor’s tone when he spoke was harder than she’d ever heard it. “The ER doctor and the orthopedic surgeon who reviewed the scans both said that Blyss was incredibly lucky. The first bullet was just above the bottom of her vest. Less than an inch lower and- we were incredibly lucky. The second bullet was just cruel and meant to cause pain.
“Based on the backpacks she saw on the table, it’s highly likely that they were carrying bricks of illegal drugs of some sort.”
“It’s hard to imagine,” she spoke and her gaze turned to the Ranger at the center of the group. “The girls didn’t seem like they were the kind of juveniles who would be carrying that kind of weight around. They seemed like they were just truant. And from what the tip said, they were just hanging around smoking.”
“Or waiting for someone.”
Blyss startled and started to turn around to look at Owen, but a twinge of pain radiated through her back and he gently drew her to rest against him as he spoke.
“Maybe we should look into the tip. Did they see it? Did someone else see it and tell them? Or was this a set up to get you or any officer involved in this investigation into a dangerous, possibly deadly situation.”
The group was unusually quiet.
Blyss shook her head. “No, at least not from the girls. A moment before the first shot the girls looked shocked and not ‘pretending’ to look it. They were stunned.”
Trace nodded. “But not everyone in a group usually gets all the same information. If they thought that the girls being there would lure you into a false sense of security, then that might have been the case.”
Texas Ranger Jake McGowan didn’t look convinced. “Would they have known you were out in that area? Does your office publicize your schedules?”
Conor shook his head. “Not on a website. We have it on our office computers and a board for quick visual reference. I find it hard to believe this wasn’t planned in advance. Things change in our office. Calls come in and we pair up Wardens to act on incidents.
“And no one would know she was on the taskforce unless someone in this room gave out the information.”
The immediate current of anger wasn’t missed by anyone.
Even FBI Special Agent Vicente Bravo didn’t stay quiet. “I trust everyone in this group with my life. I don’t think that was the cause of this. We have to look somewhere else.” He turned to look at Blyss and she struggled to sit up and fix her gaze on his face. Yes, she felt a lot better than the day before, but she’d gone without her pain medication to be fully alert for the meeting. Fighting off the pain from her back and her bruised ribs was draining her energy away.
Vicente gave her a hesitant smile. “If you’d like, I can stop by or have someone come over and try to help you focus your memories? Perhaps some guided memory exercise might help you remember more.”
That sounded great! Trying to use her own mind to review the details of the shooting wasn’t getting her anywhere. “Why not now? I can grab a cup of coffee and we can go over everything.”
Blyss felt Owen’s hand touch her leg and felt her nerves quiet.
Vicente didn’t miss a beat. “Caffeine probably won’t help you or us in that situation, and if you’re in this kind of pain, it will make it more difficult.”
“I don’t want to wait,” she told him, knowing that everyone was listening. “I’m not an invalid, and I don’t think anyone here really wants to wait to find out if I can give you anything to go on that’s useful.” She was angry. At the men. At herself.
At everything she couldn’t control.
“I’m sorry. No one wants to hear my gripe about this. I just don’t want to be useless.” She felt Owen’s harsh intake of breath in her ear. “I want to do what I can to find these men and shut down these traffickers.”
If Conor had spoken next, she might have lost her hold on her patience. He was always too nice to her, probably because he’d been her field mentor straight out of the academy. And if Trace had spoken, she would wonder if Miranda had coached him into being her wingman in his wife’s place.
But it was Jake McGowan, one of the Texas Rangers, who spoke. “No one thinks you’re useless, Miss Hardy, but every single one of us knows that you’re human. Every person I know on this taskforce has had their lives affected by these criminals. We’ve all suffered from their actions and the way they seem to come back even stronger than the last time we took down some of their players. The last thing you should worry about is your worth to this investigation.
“I believe that what you went through, the act of surviving, gave us another piece of the puzzle in how we’re going to take them down as an organization. Everyone here knows the lengths to which these men will go to in their plans to get drugs past us in one direction and money in the other, but we all know how much we’ve given to this fight and none of us are going to give up.
“If you have something, a memory, or a piece of information that will help, you’ll remember it. You’ll figure it out. Your mind will be driven to remember it. But your body has taken a beating. Let it heal. The rest of us have avenues to explore in our investigation in the meantime.”
Blyss looked at him and all pretense of putting on a brave front melted away when she realized she didn’t need to. T
he people surrounding her would have seen through a ruse. These people, these amazing people, knew she was brave.
And so, did she.
She wasn’t going to give up.
She wasn’t going to fold.
“Okay.” She looked at each person in turn while she laced her fingers through Owens where it lay on her knees. “Okay. I can do that. I can give myself the time to heal up a little, but I do want to try the guided memory exercise when I’ve lowered the dosage on my pain meds.”
Almost as if her body were chiming in with its own answer, she failed to fight of a yawn. It didn’t end well since the stretch of her ribs only made the pain more pronounced.
“Go,” Trace gave her wink. “Let the man help you. Sleep is one of the best treatments right now.”
Conor agreed. Standing up, he moved to her side. “And just so you know, the other treatment I recommend is letting him take care of you. You were always so determined to be strong and do everything on your own when you started out as a Game Warden, and that hasn’t changed. But I hope you understand that there isn’t a person in the Warden’s office, or in this group, that wouldn’t help you if you needed it. This is how we’re going to beat these guys,” he told her. “We’re going to pull together our agencies and our skills and that’s how this ends. Because against all of us, they don’t stand a chance.”
As the meeting broke up, Owen easily lifted her as he stood up from the chair and walked around the edge of the room to get to the open doorway of his bedroom. He took her straight to the bed and sat her down. “I’ll get you some water for your medication and then you’re going to get some sleep.”
He wasn’t even in the bathroom when she asked the question that was filling her head.
“I was hoping we could get some sleep, if that’s okay with you?”
“Okay?” He quickly filled the glass and stepped back into her sight a second or two later. “I’d love to do that.”
Love.
Blyss smiled and told her heart to calm down. She had been in love with Owen for so long she didn’t think she could handle him saying anything like that to her.
She took the pills from his outstretched hand and tossed them back. A gentle swallow of water later and she eased back onto the pillow.
Owen was there, facing her on the bed with his gaze roaming over her face.
Blyss couldn’t help but smile at the way he looked at her, but she was also pondering a question of great importance. To her.
“Are you uncomfortable?” She asked because he didn’t even bother to open a few buttons on his shirt. “You can take off your shirt at least. Give yourself some breathing room.”
His expression made her feel warm all over in the best of ways.
“If I start,” his voice was a gravelly whisper of sound, “I’m going to want to take everything else off just to feel your skin against mine.”
She couldn’t even say ‘oh.’
“But it will happen, Blyss, and soon. And when you’re ready for it, I’m ready and willing to strip down to nothing and let you have your wicked way with me.”
“Wicked?” She almost laughed at the idea. “You think I’m wicked?”
“No.” His chuckle rolled over her like a gentle sweep of sound. “But you will be, Blyss. And I’ll be looking forward to it.”
She felt her energy begin to flag. Even though she wanted to hear more about Owen’s plans for her… for them, she fell asleep to his fingertips against her temple and the warm caress of his voice.
For Owen, having Blyss in his house was a kind of revelation. He never brought women back to his place. Never. That was one of three rules he followed when it came to sex after he returned home from his years in the Army. Never at his house, never more than one night, and always protected.
And he hadn’t even come close to having sex with Blyss. She was living there by his choice, and since he’d brought her home, his house hadn’t seen this kind of traffic since his mother passed on.
He’d enjoyed the quiet. He’d come home, kick off his shoes, grab a beer, or something stronger and sit on the couch and zone out to whatever was on the TV screen.
He went out to talk to people other than family.
Once the animals were taken care of, he’d go out, grab a few drinks at a bar, pick a willing woman and work out the stress that had built up inside of him. He’d had his share, but he’d always followed his rules.
And ended up empty when it was over.
When he’d dragged himself out of bed that afternoon, it had only been to silence the phone that was ringing like crazy in the main room of the house. It was yet another guest.
Trace had already been over for the taskforce meeting and was working that night with Conor following some leads from things that they’d recovered from Blyss’ SUV, which had been abandoned on a deserted oil field.
So, he really wasn’t surprised when Miranda called up and wanted to come over and bring them dinner. A few minutes after her arrival, he’d gone out to feed the animals and bumped into his father. Giving a nod to his father’s advancing years, they’d taken the golf cart that his father used around the property to get the feed sorted out and distributed among the enclosures.
Leon was his usual ‘business-like’ self when it came to the feeding. Unlike Owen, who liked to get a little hands-on with a bunch of their long-term residents, Leon kept his distance from anything with more teeth than he had.
When they’d worked their way to the back end of the property and Boo’s enclosure, Leon scoffed at him. “You’re gonna find yourself short a finger or two someday… if you’re lucky.”
Turning a bit to the side, leaning his elbow on the wooden railing, he met his father’s wary gaze with his own. “I know what I’m doing, papa.”
Leon tucked his chin down and kept his gaze level. “Do you now?”
“I’ve raised Boo from a baby.”
“A six-foot baby.” Leon shook his head. “Don’t let ego get the better of you, son. If there’s one thing that scares me in this world, it’s the thought of outliving you.” His father leaned on the railing himself, but his gaze was fixed on the hulk of an alligator almost submerged in the water. “When you were sent to the Middle East, we prayed several times a day. I caught your mama sneaking in a few prayers when she thought I wasn’t watching. And yet she was the one who told me time and time again that you’d come home to us. You’d come back alive and the rest, we could deal with.”
“And then we lost her.”
Leon sucked in a breath and let it out in a ragged, almost shuddering exhale. “Yes, we lost Marie. You and me both, son. Our lives changed by steps and when she was gone it felt like I was pulled under the surface. Drowning.
“And there were times when I would have gladly crawled into the mausoleum with her.”
“You’re a stubborn man, papa. Of course, you didn’t.”
Owen saw the way his father’s lips curved into the barest of smiles. And the look he cast at Owen reminded him of so many times during his life when Leon was getting ready to contradict him in his own special way.
“Don’t think I pulled myself together all on my own.” Leon turned his head in the direction of the main house and then swung back around to look into Owen’s questioning gaze. “I don’t know if you remember how many times Blyss came by during those days. The way she’d keep your mama company when she couldn’t stand me anymore. They’d paint each other’s fingernails and laugh about how badly they’d done it. But your mama would show off those nails like they were masterpieces.
“Blyss was always around, Owen. She gave and gave and when Marie and I were despairing over the next step in the fight, Blyss kept us fighting.”
Boudreau’s tail slapped at the water and a bird took to the air nearby.
“Your mama always thought it would end up being the two of you.”
That, Owen knew. “She didn’t push me into it though, and mama could talk anyone into anything.”
“
Of course, she didn’t.” His father’s soft chuckle was a welcome sound. “You’re a Mercier and a Hebert from her side. We’re a willful bunch no matter how you look at it. Marie knew that if you were going to make both of you happy, you’d have to want it. Someone else telling you what was what would only make you dig your heels in, or go hell-bent for leather to prove it wrong.
“So, Marie prayed for the two of you with every breath.”
Owen felt his heart stutter in his chest.
“She prayed that you’d realize what a treasure Blyss was, and that you’d decide that she was the one for you and go after her like it was your next breath.”
They stood beside each other in the dark and listened as the animals in their enclosures went about their lives. The very air around them seemed charged with possibilities.
“I bet mama would have been so proud to see me get married.”
Leon’s laughter was a single rough burst. “She was proud of you for breathing, son, but she would have danced for joy to see you married to the right woman and she would have wept for joy to see you become a father.”
Owen felt the air against his skin like a physical touch and he stood back from the railing with a resolute lift of his chin. “You think she can still see us now, papa? You think she’s watching over us?”
Leon rapped his knuckles on the wooden railing. “I think she’s standing right behind you, ma vie. She’s got your back now and forever.”
Nodding, he leaned in and gave his father a kiss on his cheek. “You’re a good man, Leon Mercier. I’m lucky to be your son.”
“If you weren’t, I would have knocked you upside the head a long time ago to get your act together.”
Owen wasn’t all that surprised. “But I’m a Mercier.”
Leon nodded. “And your mama was a Hebert.”
Gesturing toward the house, Owen smiled. “I think I need to go see if Blyss needs me.”
As he walked past his father, Leon gave him a playful shove. “Go on, son. Laissez les bon temps rouler.”
