“I fucking love this place,” Wolf said under his breath.
Laura stood, ready to throw herself in front of Nell if Rachel started playing Mama Bear, and it was almost a sure thing at this point. She liked Rachel, but more than that, she understood Rachel. Rachel was the alpha female of her group. Rachel led a tribe that included Callie and Jen. And Laura had found herself with Holly and Nell under her wing. Laura crossed her arms over her chest and sent Rachel a look, alpha female to alpha female.
“What do you think I’m going to do, Laura? I’m not going to murder her,” Rachel said with a huff. “Not when I’m holding my baby.”
“She’s sworn not to kill anyone around her baby,” Jen added with a serious nod.
Nell looked from one face to another as though trying to figure out where she’d gone wrong. “Don’t worry. I’m prepared. The tub at Callie’s cabin is too small, so I’ve found a biodegradable kiddie pool that I think will work.”
Holly groaned as her head hit the table.
Rachel growled as she leaned in. “Look, Nell, feel free to prophesize all you like, but Callie is not having a water birth. She’s my friend, and I have to look out for her. I have been lying to her for months, and I will continue to lie to her because I don’t want her to be scared, but here’s the truth. Giving birth hurts. I mean it really fucking hurts. Oh, I know that according to Callie, Zane and Nate have seriously stretched out that whole part of her body, but I refuse to believe that Zane Hollister’s cock is as big as a baby’s head.” Rachel pointed to her daughter’s perfectly round noggin. “Look at that. Oh, it’s a little bigger than it was then, but not much. That came out of my vagina. And no one thought to lube her head up. You would think the way these men are in this town that someone would have a tube of K-Y on their persons, but no. No lube, Rachel. No whiskey, Rachel. No, you’re giving birth. You can’t have a hamburger in between contractions. Callie is going to the hospital. Callie is going to have drugs.”
Nell stood up but didn’t move past the safety of Laura’s back. Despite her sometimes out-of-touch-with-the-real-world nature, she had a healthy sense of self-preservation. “But women have been giving birth naturally for thousands of years.”
Rachel had an answer for that, too. “Well, people have been crapping in the forests for thousands of years, too, Nell, but I don’t see you and Henry giving up your indoor plumbing. It’s called progress. When Callie goes into the hospital, I’m going to tell those doctors to put all the drugs they have into her epidural. All of them. And don’t you even talk about a silent birth. There’s nothing silent about birth. It’s loud. First there’s the screaming because of the contractions, and then there’s some man whining about me breaking his hand. That wasn’t what I wanted to break that day, let me tell you.”
“Hey, guys.” Callie had a bright smile on her face as she made her way toward the table. She’d changed back into her street clothes, which included shorts and one of the new T-shirts from her husband’s bar. It had the Trio logo and sported a new “tourist friendly” slogan that the town council had informed all of the business owners in Bliss they must use to rehabilitate Bliss’s image.
Don’t worry about the murder rate in Bliss
The wings are hot at Trio
“I bet the mayor adores that shirt,” Laura said with a genuine smile. Zane Hollister was an asshole, but damn if he wasn’t a lovable one.
Callie smoothed her T-shirt over her pregnant belly. “Well, Zane and Nate don’t agree that we need to change Bliss’s image as a place where tourists get murdered.”
Holly leaned back, crossing one leg over the other. “Most of the murders that have occurred here weren’t our fault. Rachel had to kill her stalker. That shouldn’t count.”
“They count him as a tourist because he bought some fudge from Teeny,” Rachel explained. “And the guy Callie killed stayed at the motel. So did that Ivan fellow, who is the only one who killed an actual tourist.”
Callie tapped a foot against the floor. “And those other Russian mob guys weren’t in town long enough to buy anything before we killed them. They shouldn’t count. I think the mayor is making way too much of that tiny article.”
It hadn’t been tiny. It had been a feature in Time magazine. The reporter, a woman named Mia Danvers, had wondered if Bliss, Colorado, wasn’t the most dangerous place in the United States to visit. Strangely, Laura had noticed it hadn’t really kept the tourists away. If nothing else, there had been an odd surge of thrill seekers, but the mayor and the town council were busily trying to refute the statistics.
“Zane wants to make sure no one else moves here,” Callie continued. “He likes Bliss exactly the way it is. He and Nate are like those immigrants who come to a place and then want to build a wall to keep everyone else out.”
Rachel sighed. “I think Max and Rye are right there with them. Are you ready for some lunch? Jen and I thought we could have some girl time.”
Callie leaned over and kissed Paige’s nearly bald head. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” She turned back to Nell. “I’ll see you on Friday. I can’t wait to start my breathing exercises. And tell Irene to bring me a double chocolate Blizzard.”
As they left, Rachel turned back to Nell, her eyes silently promising retribution if Callie didn’t get her drugs.
“Hey, Holly and Nell, I’m ready for you guys,” Brooke Harper called out from the back of the store.
Holly got up. “Time to get poked and prodded.”
“Darlin’, it’s always the right time to get prodded if it’s with the right instrument,” Wolf said with a grin on his ridiculously handsome face.
Holly shook her head and wandered off to her fitting. Nell gave Laura a hug.
“Maybe Rachel is right. Maybe I should think about my plumbing practices.”
It was time to go a little alpha on Nell. “Nell, you are not getting an outhouse. No one will come to your place and make blankets for the homeless if they have to use an outhouse.”
Nell bit at her lower lip. “I suppose you’re right. Well, I like my bathroom anyway, and if it helps the homeless, then I’ll keep it the way it is.”
“You’re good with her,” Wolf said as Laura sat back down after her friends were gone. “And you were quite good with Rachel. You’re a very intuitive woman.”
Laura took a sip of her tea and wished with all her heart she could feel a deep connection to the man in front of her. Wolf Meyer was everything she could hope for. He was well educated, gorgeous, and kind. He was easier to get along with than any man she’d met in a long time. So why did she long for the fight? For the push and pull she’d had with Rafe and Cam?
Rafe and Cam had turned out to be assholes.
She stopped herself. She couldn’t think that way. They weren’t assholes. They were men looking out for their careers. That was the way it was in the real world. It hadn’t been their fault that she’d been taken hostage and nearly murdered by a serial killer. They had followed their leads, and she’d followed hers. Her heart ached, but that was the way it was.
A callused hand slid over hers. “You’re so far away.”
“Sorry. I was thinking about something else.”
“Or someone else,” Wolf murmured. “I was going to ask you if you wanted to go out with me tonight. I think your answer is going to be no, isn’t it?”
“Oh, Wolf, I am sorry.”
He shook his head. “It’s all right. I like you. I like you a lot, but I don’t intend to be here for too long. I’m getting back in.”
She doubted that. Wolf had been discharged from the Navy against his own wishes. He’d taken heavy fire in Afghanistan, and given his injuries, the Navy decided to decline his offer to re-up. He’d flown in to Washington weeks before to try to talk his way back in, but she doubted it would happen.
“I hope you do,” she said.
Wolf seemed a bit lost. He’d come home to recuperate at his mother’s house. He’d been working odd jobs in the months since he�
��d returned.
“It’ll happen,” he said with confidence. “Now, I was also looking for you for another reason. Do you have any idea why the feds would be looking for you?”
She sat straight up, every nerve in her body sparking with suspicion. “What feds?”
“I went by your place, and there were a couple of feds knocking on your door. They asked if I knew where you were, but I said no. I said I hadn’t seen you in a couple of days, but they should go up to Mountain and Valley because you spend a lot of time up there.”
And they would believe Wolf because he was an excellent liar. She sensed that about him. He wouldn’t do it if he didn’t have to, but when the occasion called for it, Wolf Meyer could lie and never bat an eye. He would have made an excellent CIA operative if he hadn’t been a SEAL. She couldn’t help it. Even five years after she’d been fired from her job, she still profiled everyone around her. “That should throw them off for a while.”
Mountain and Valley was the local naturist community, a nudist colony on the mountain. Bill Hartman ran the place, and he didn’t like feds, either. Bliss was a suspicious community. Bill would likely send them on a merry chase.
Wolf leaned forward in his chair, his dark eyes softening, drawing her in. He was also damn good at that. “I wanted to give you some time if you needed to get out of here. I don’t have anything to do, Laura. If you want to, say, take a trip, I can go with you, make sure you’re safe. I can take care of you.”
Oh, yeah, she was a dumb shit for not falling for this guy, but it wouldn’t be fair to him. “I’m not on the run, Wolf. Well, not in the way you think. I’m not wanted for anything.”
“But you would prefer not to talk to the feds?”
Oh, she would prefer to never see a federal agent for the rest of her life. When she’d walked out of DC, she’d done it for good. She’d known she would never go back. That was why she’d changed her name and hadn’t spoken to anyone she knew from there in five years. Her parents were gone. She had a sister who lived in France. Laura talked to her once a year, but Michelle had promised not to tell anyone where Laura was. They had agreed that it was best for Laura to hide. Given the fact that she was certain the Marquis de Sade was involved in some sort of law enforcement, she didn’t particularly want them to know where she was hiding.
“No, I would rather not talk to them, but now I’m curious.” And a little scared. Had he caught up to her? “Are you sure they were FBI?”
“If they weren’t, then they were doing a damn fine impersonation. And that’s the other thing I want to talk to you about. We need to get rid of those guys, whoever they are. Mel is out at my mom’s, but he’s going to come into town at some point in time today, and what’s he going to see? Two dudes in suits and sunglasses riding around in a dark SUV.”
She sighed. Mel wouldn’t see feds. Mel was a lovely man, but he was also insanely paranoid about aliens and all the things that went with them. “Men in black.”
Wolf pointed. “On the nose, love. My mom’s boyfriend is going to flip out, and then he’ll come and get my mom and they’ll end up in the bomb shelter plotting how to survive the invasion, and I’ll have to call my brother to talk her down. I don’t want to call my brother. Every time I call my brother I get a lecture about moving on. I get some Zen-craptastic speech on how getting booted from the teams is the best thing in the world for me—or it would be if I would get a job. Like he has a job. Do you know what he does? My sainted brother works in a BDSM club spanking subs. Maybe if some dude was willing to pay me a ton of money to spank pretty subs, I would be fine with my military career being over. So we need to figure out how to get the feds into something less conspicuous than those suits so my mom’s boyfriend doesn’t freak. You see the precarious house of cards I live in?”
Wolf was talking, but his voice had faded to the background. Only one thing held Laura’s attention as a big, black SUV pulled up, and she realized her time was up.
It was happening. Someone had found her.
Why had the FBI tracked her down? Had something changed with the de Sade case? Her heart fluttered at the thought of having to get involved in that again. She felt herself get a little faint. Best-case scenario—this was unrelated and someone needed to talk to her about the Russian mob coming through town a few months before. She’d stayed off the record, but someone might have mentioned her name. Worst-case scenario? She’d been right. The Marquis de Sade had tracked her down because he wouldn’t want to leave loose ends.
“Laura? Are you okay?” Wolf stood and then knelt at her side, his hand grasping hers. “Maybe I should take you upstairs so you can lie down.”
The door to the SUV opened.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I should have dealt with them myself,” Wolf said in a deep, soothing tone. This was another reason Laura had known she and Wolf couldn’t work out. He was so much more interested in her when she needed help. Wolf was looking for a damsel in distress.
Where the hell had he been five years ago?
“I’m fine. I’m seeing ghosts, that’s all. I can handle them.” And if de Sade had come for her, then maybe she had some unfinished business with him, too. But it was more than likely about the mob trials. Alexei Markov had set off a firestorm when he’d decided to turn on his mob boss. Nate Wright, Bliss’s sheriff and Callie’s second husband, had already had his fill of feds. He’d complained to Laura about it earlier in the day.
Except the minute the dark-haired man in the perfectly tailored suit slid gracefully from the SUV, she realized this had nothing to do with Alexei’s case.
She’d left out a scenario.
Armageddon. In that scenario, Rafael Kincaid showed up and her past finally, truly caught up with her. Laura closed her eyes and prayed it was an illusion. That glorious man in the suit wasn’t Rafe. She opened her eyes.
Shit. It was Rafe, and he wasn’t alone. An enormous man walked behind him. His suit wasn’t perfectly tailored. He looked uncomfortable in it, like any moment his body was going to burst from its confines.
Cameron Briggs.
Rafe was an elegant bird of prey, while Cam was a huge tiger stalking his next meal.
What the hell were they doing here? When she’d left, she’d made damn sure that the two men who had broken her heart into tiny pieces and then stomped on it in a public forum couldn’t find her. Oh, sure, they’d been all tears and apologies after she’d been nearly murdered, but that had been nothing more than guilt.
“Do you know those men?” Wolf asked.
She knew every inch of those men. She knew how Rafe liked his cock sucked and that Cam could eat pussy all night long. She knew them intimately and far beyond the physical ways they liked to fuck. She’d spent a year getting to know them. She’d spent a year working and drinking and talking with them. She knew Cam was ashamed of how he’d grown up and Rafe hated that people knew he came from wealth.
She knew they valued their placement in the FBI far more than they could ever love a woman.
Laura nodded.
“From the look on your face, it wasn’t a good thing. Do I need to kick some ass?”
“No,” she said quickly. Wolf would do it, and he would get in trouble.
Rafe and Cam were looking up and down the street, their mouths moving in short, clipped words. Finally, almost in slow motion, Cam turned and stopped. He stood looking at her in the window, as still as a statue. Rafe watched him for a moment, and then turned as well.
“Laura.” There was no mistaking the word Rafe’s mouth made.
She stood, utterly panicked at the thought of them walking in and realizing that after five years she still wasn’t over them. How pathetic was that?
Rafe moved first, followed by Cam. They stormed into the Trading Post, stalking through the tourist merchandise and the candy aisle until they made it to the tea room.
“Laura.” Cam was the one who said her name now. “We found you.”
“No thanks to him,” Rafe said, eyeing Wolf,
who stood beside her. “He sent us on a wild-goose chase. You look good, bella.”
Bella. Beautiful. It was what he’d called her when they had made love. How dare he ever call her that again.
What if they had come after her? What if they had figured out what a mistake they had made? Rafe was eating her up with his eyes. Cam was pulling his alpha male act, staring Wolf down. What if they had searched for her, longed for her the way she’d longed for them?
“You know what you did was illegal,” Cam was saying, his icy blue eyes laser-focused on Wolf. She stared at him for a long moment. His golden hair was cut short. She’d always wanted to see what it would look like longer, but Cam liked the simplicity. It highlighted his masculine face. Cam was all sharp angles with the exception of his sensual lips. God, she remembered what it felt like to have his mouth on her. “You impeded an investigation. You lied to duly appointed federal agents.”
She felt her hope die. They were here on a case. Of course. How silly to think they still gave a damn about her.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” Cam asked Wolf.
“He’s my fiancé.” Laura said the words without really thinking. It was instinct that caused her to protect herself. She slid her hand into Wolf’s and lied through her teeth. “We’re engaged to be married.”
Rafe’s face fell. Cam took a step back.
Wolf hauled her close. “You know how it goes, gentlemen. I’m not one to let something like an investigation get in the way of true love.”
Yep. Wolf Meyer was cool as a cucumber under pressure.
And she was definitely under pressure.
Chapter Three
Cam Briggs felt like his gut had been kicked straight out of his body.
Engaged? How the hell could she be engaged? He tried to wrap his brain around those words. He’d spent the last five years of his life thinking of nothing but Laura, and she had been getting engaged to some dickwad military guy.
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