by R. R. Banks
He gives me a look and a smirk, and I can see the determination on his face. In that moment, I see how competitive he is and know he's not going to rest until he wins me a teddy bear. The realization makes me laugh. Boys and their egos.
“You know this game is rigged, right?” I ask. “Those bottles are weighted so that –”
He holds his hand up, cutting me off, flashing me that roguish smile of his. “I'm going to win you a damn teddy bear.”
Like I said, boys and their egos.
Almost an hour, and nearly fifty dollars later, Aidan pumps his fist and lets out a mighty whoop when he finally succeeds in knocking all three milk bottles off the pedestal. The game attendant, suppressing a smirk, just shakes his head, and hands Aidan a teddy bear.
Like a conquering hero coming home from war, Aidan comes over and presents me with the spoils of said war. I laugh and curtsey as I accept his hard won prize.
“Thank you, kind sir,” I say. “This is the most beautiful teddy bear anyone has ever spent fifty dollars on.”
He laughs and gives me a quick peck on the cheek. “You're welcome.”
The bear secure against my full, round belly, we head off to enjoy the rest of the carnival. As we stroll the midway, dodging crowds of screaming teens and little kids in costume, we see a tall, lanky kid with long oily hair, heading our way.
“Arnie Hollins,” I say.
“Arnie who?”
“That's the kid in the clown mask outside the bar that night Victor called, and all hell broke loose,” I reply. “He got himself shot pulling that stupid clown prank.”
“That'll teach him,” Aidan says. “At least, I hope it does.”
We stop in front of him, and I look at his leg very pointedly. Arnie looks a little sheepish and won't meet my eyes. His friends continue on, leaving him standing there with us. I don't know Arnie very well at all. We've only met a few times, but I know him enough to recognize him on sight – which is made easier by the fact that here we are some five months later, and he's still walking with a noticeable limp. Idiot.
Arnie looks me up and down, his eyes leaving a trail of grease across my skin. I shudder with revulsion, feeling like I need a shower after being eye-screwed by this filthy little brat. His gaze though, remains firmly fixed on me.
“I guess you learned a valuable lesson, huh?” I ask.
He sighs. “Yeah, guess so,” he says.
“You're lucky I didn't have a gun that night,” I say. “I might have shot you dead outside the Hail Mary.”
He cocks his head and looks at me. “What do you mean?”
“Please,” I say. “After you got shot because of your dumbass prank, are you really going to try to tell me that you didn't screw with me that night too?”
He shakes his head. “I was nowhere near the Hail Mary that night. But believe me, I sure woulda liked to have been. Even all knocked up, you're still hot,” he says, eye-screwing me again. “I got shot over on Downing Street. Damn Sonny Golens did it.”
“What time was that?” Aidan asks.
The boy looks at Aidan, as if noticing him for the first time – and looks startled. Aidan is easily twice the size of the scrawny beanpole of a kid, and could snap him in half if he wanted to. Arnie stands up a little straighter, his attitude suddenly becoming a lot friendlier.
“About nine, nine-thirty or so, I guess,” he says.
A chill sweeps through my body as I listen to his words. If he got shot between nine and nine-thirty, it couldn't have been him outside the bar that night, since I saw the clown-man after ten. I catch Aidan's eye, and sense that he's having the same thoughts I am.
Shit. If it wasn't Arnie Hollins outside the bar – who was it?
I clear my throat and give him a long look. “Yeah, well, maybe this will teach you to stop doing dumb stuff you see on the Internet.”
He shrugs and drops his gaze. He mumbles something that sounds like, “Yeah, maybe,” and hobbles off, clearly wanting to put some distance between him and Aidan. I watch him go, as a little worm of fear begins to slither its way up my spine. As if sensing it, Aidan steps forward and pulls me into a tight embrace – an act not made very easy by my very pregnant midsection. But, we somehow manage.
“Doesn't mean anything. Doesn't mean it was Victor,” he says. “You told me that Jessa said there were a few teenage punks out pulling this prank. Maybe it wasn't him, but it was probably one of his friends.”
“Yeah, possibly,” I say, though I don't know if I believe it myself.
I decided to take Aidan up on his offer to let me stay at his place tonight. Jessa's gone for the evening, and after Arnie's revelation, I suddenly don't want to be home alone. I mean, Aidan is right, just because it wasn’t Arnie doesn't mean Victor was in that parking lot. Odds are, it was one of Arnie's stupid little friends.
But, I'd be lying if I said I wasn’t slightly freaking out right now.
I pace around Aidan’s living room, my nervous energy getting the best of me. Oliver is lazily lounging on the couch, his eyes following me as I walk back and forth endlessly. I'm sure he finds me either irritating or exhausting by now. But, I really don't know what to do with myself.
I try to focus my mind on something else to avoid fixating on it. All this stress can’t be good for the baby, after all. All in all, tonight was wonderful. I haven't seen or heard Aidan laugh as much as he did at the carnival. I wasn't actually sure he had it in him. Like, maybe he was afraid his face would crack if he laughed too much or something.
The fact that he is doing his best to put his past behind him, and work on building a future for himself – one that might possibly include me – fills me with emotion.
I never expected to be in this position. I never thought I would find myself in a relationship again. I always thought that maybe, somewhere in the distant future, I'd carve out a spot for someone special. I just didn't expect it to happen so soon.
But, here I am. Here we are. We can either embrace it, or we can run from it. I'm choosing to embrace it, and it makes me insanely happy to see that Aidan is as well.
And speaking of embracing it...
I smile as a wicked thought crosses my mind. Aidan's in the shower, and I've got plenty of nervous energy still to burn, so why not? Oliver lifts his head as I start to walk to the hallway that leads to the bedrooms in the back of the house.
“You be a good boy and don't come snooping,” I say to him.
He drops his head back down on the couch and lets out a long sigh, either falling asleep, or totally engrossed in the show about polar bears. I can't really tell which. Moving quietly down the hallway – which is more like a graceful waddle at this point in my pregnancy – I slip into Aidan's bedroom. I can still hear the shower running, and when I pause to listen, I hear something that catches my attention – a low grunt, and a moan.
Could he be in there masturbating? Given the lack of attention I've been able to give him lately, it wouldn't surprise me.
Feeling myself growing wet at mental images of Aidan stroking his glorious cock, I quickly strip out of my clothes. I pad into the bathroom, waving away the clouds of steam that are billowing around me. His bathroom is enormous, and his shower is the walk-in type that has no doors. Sneaking over to the edge of the doorway, I peek my head around.
Aidan has his back to me with his head pressed to the tile, and I take a moment to admire the view. The muscles in his back ripple and flex as he moves – and he's obviously taking care of himself.
I slip into the shower behind him, feeling for all the world like this is the set up for a bad porno, but not caring. When I wrap my arms around his waist, his entire body stiffens, surprised by my entrance. He doesn't turn around though, and when I grab hold of his throbbing dick, he lets out a soft moan.
“Why don't you let me help you with that?”
He says nothing, but as I start to stroke his cock for him, he lets out a soft gasp. I press my body to his as best as I can, letting the water rain dow
n over us, making our skin slick and slippery. My hand glides up and down his thick shaft as I stroke him.
Aidan tries to remove my hand and turn around. But, I have no intention of allowing him to do so. As turned on as I am right now, I want to pleasure him. I want to make him feel good.
“Don't move,” I say. “Just relax and enjoy. You can make it up to me later.”
He remains silent, but stops fighting me. I continue stroking his cock with my hand, gripping him so tight, that I hear his breath catch in his throat.
“Fuck,” he says. “You're going to make me come.”
“That's the point, isn’t it?”
“I want you,” he growls.
“And you'll have me,” I say. “Just not right now.”
I work his cock furiously, my excitement building as he draws closer to climax. Unable to hold back any longer, I slip my other hand between my thighs and start to rub my clit. It's not long before we're both moaning, our voices echoing off the tile around us. I feel my own climax building as Aidan's body tenses, readying to explode.
I've never done anything like this before, but the sheer intimacy and eroticism of it steals my breath away. As Aidan's cock begins to throb in my hand, my heart races, and I feel myself balancing on the precipice.
He throws his head back and lets out a guttural moan as I send him over the edge. Watching him come like that is too much, and I join him, crying out as my body trembles and shakes, my orgasm exploding like a bomb inside me.
We stand like that for a minute or two, his cock starting to deflate and my racing heart beginning to subside. Slowly, he turns around, and I let him. He pulls me into a tight embrace, pulling my body as close to his as he can. He leans down and kisses me. It's tender, sweet, and filled with emotion.
“You are amazing,” he says, his voice a little hoarse.
I give him a devilish grin. “You haven’t seen nothin' yet.”
We stand beneath the cascading water, letting it rain down over us as we hold each other close. Right now, I truly believe that nothing is ever going to hurt me. Not as long as I have Aidan. As long as he's with me, I’m safe.
More than that, I’m happy.
Aidan
“It’s great to finally meet you. My brothers have nothing but great things to say about you,” I say. “They tell me you've helped them out of some pretty tight spots.”
Almost half a year after my conversation with Brayden, Adam McMurtry is sitting in a chair on the other side of the desk in my office. He's tall, maybe six-foot-two or three, lean, and has brown hair and eyes. I honestly don't know what I was expecting Adam to look like after the brief conversation we had over the phone, but this is definitely not it. Rather than looking shady or greasy – like the fixers you see in the movies – Adam is bookish. He looks more like an accountant than a fixer.
“I first met you at Brayden and Holly’s wedding, you know,” he says. “Shared a drink and talked to you for about fifteen minutes or so, I’d guess.”
I open my mouth to reply, but close it again as I feel a heat flaring in my cheeks. I'm usually great with names and faces, but as I think back to the wedding, I realize I don’t recall seeing this man at all, let alone talking to him. I feel bad, but he's without a doubt, one of the most ordinary and nondescript people I've ever seen in my life.
There is absolutely nothing remarkable about Adam at all. If I met him on the street, I'd probably completely forget him five minutes later. Obviously, given that I don't recall him from the wedding. I thought someone would have to go to tremendous effort to make themselves so – ordinary. And yet, Adam makes it seem so natural.
I have to assume that's one of the things that makes him such a good PI.
He chuckles, as he sees me struggling. “Don't worry about it,” he says. “I wouldn't remember me either. That’s kind of my thing, actually.”
“Yeah, I'm sorry about that. There was a lot going on that day,” I say. “A lot of people there. Big crowd.”
He nods, though I can see in his eyes that he doesn't believe me for a second. “You’re right,” he says. “It was quite the event.”
I give him a tight smile. “Yeah, it was,” I say, before trying to move the conversation along. “So, listen, I know you told me you don't normally get involved in matters of a – personal nature.”
He lets out a small chuckle. “Ordinarily, no,” he says. “I prefer to stay out of the domestic arena. I mostly work on insurance fraud or corporate espionage cases.”
“I don't blame you for wanting to stay out of domestic shit,” I say and laugh. “Gets messy.”
“That it does.”
“My brothers also tell me you are a man with fine taste in alcohol,” I say and laugh.
There's a good bottle of scotch sitting on my desk, so I pour a few fingers for the both of us and push one of the glasses across to him. Adam takes the glass and raises it to me in thanks. He takes a drink, and closes his eyes, savoring the liquid as it slides down his throat. A moment later, he opens his eyes again and looks at the glass like he's in love.
“This is some of the finest scotch in the world,” he says. “You Anderson boys all have excellent taste.”
“This is one of the many things passed down to us from our father,” I say. “He believed a good scotch can help lubricate the wheels of progress – and the better the scotch, the better the outcome.”
“Wise man,” Adam replies.
“That he was,” I reply. “Anyway, I'm sorry to drag you into something like this. I know it's not your usual cup of tea.”
“I have a longstanding relationship with Liam,” he says. “He's a good man. I respect him a lot, so I don't mind doing the odd job for you Andersons. After all, none of my clients drink finer scotch than you lot.”
I laugh and raise my glass to him. “If you expect the best, you must always give the best.”
We toast each other and take a swallow of our drinks. He smiles and lets out a long breath, a look of euphoria on his face, like it's the best thing he's ever tasted. He looks at me and shrugs.
“I do enjoy a good scotch,” he says. “Probably more than I should, and certainly more than my wife would like me to.”
We drain our glasses, and I pour us both a refill. He takes a sip and leans back in the chair, folding one of his legs over the other, cradling the glass on his knee. Adam gives me a long, level look, and I can see that because he's so nondescript, he’s also easy to underestimate. There’s a quick, sharp intelligence in his eyes. I can also tell that he's a man who observes and processes things faster than most people.
“So, you want to tell me more about it, Aidan?” he asks. “The details you gave over the phone were pretty sparse.”
I let out a long breath. I lay out everything I know – which truthfully, isn't much. It takes about twenty minutes or so to catch Adam up to speed. Or, at least, give him the pieces of the story I know. Through it all, he sits there, not saying a word, just absorbing everything silently. It surprises me that he isn’t taking notes, but maybe the guy has a computer for a brain and can retain it all. When I'm done, he takes another sip and nods.
“So, basically what you're looking for is a threat assessment?” he asks.
“Basically,” I say. “I need to know if this guy actually poses a risk to her or not. Especially if that was him at the Hail Mary last October.”
He nods again. “I can do that,” he says. “That's easy.”
“Good,” I say. “Excellent.”
“I need to know whatever you know about this Victor,” he says. “Any piece of information, no matter if you think it's relevant or not. I need to make sure I'm targeting the right guy when I go fishing.”
It's then that he slips a pad out of his coat pocket and produces a pen. He takes notes as I speak, telling him all the details I’ve heard from Katie over the last few months – which honestly, isn't much. When I finish a couple of minutes later, he snaps his notebook closed and nods.
“I'd get you more information, but I need to keep this quiet. I don't want her knowing we're looking into this piece of shit,” I say. “I know it's not a lot to work with.”
He shrugs. “I've worked with a lot less,” he says and grins. “Lucky for you, I'm very good at my job.”
“I appreciate you handling this for me,” I say. “And for your discretion.”
He waves me off. “You might not be saying that when you get my bill,” he says. “That's the other thing I love about you Anderson boys – not only is your scotch top shelf, you pay top dollar.”
I laugh. “My brothers say you're worth every penny, so I'm not going to sweat it,” I say. “Whatever your rate is, is fine. I'm covering your expenses too. If you want to stay at the Four Seasons, get the luxury suite.”
“Also lucky for you, I'm not a high-end hotel and food kinda guy,” he laughs. “I'm frugal as hell. Also my wife's doing.”
“Whatever it takes,” I say and laugh. “Spare no expense.”
“I'll try to keep that in mind.”
Adam gets up, and I show him out of my office, and through the house. When we pass through the front rooms, Oliver looks up at him from his usual spot on the couch, but drops his head and returns to snoozing. Adam is so nondescript, not even my dog is excited to see him.
I open the door and shake his hand. “I appreciate you taking this on for me.”
“Not a problem,” he says. “Give me a few days or so, and I'll get back to you with some updates.”
“Sounds good.”
“In the meantime,” he says, a mischievous glint in his eye, “take Katie out and do something special. Though, I saw the town down at the bottom of the mountain, and if I can make a suggestion – you might want to take her somewhere else.”
“I see Brayden briefed you.”
He shrugs. “Maybe a little,” he says and laughs.
Adam turns and walks out to his rental car. I watch him drive off until he disappears through the gates, leaving me alone to wonder if I'm doing the right thing by sticking my nose where Katie clearly doesn't want it.