by Casey Hagen
Right where Chloe worked.
“We’ve got rumblings, and I don’t like rumblings.”
“Sorelli’s in jail. His operation has been picked cleaner than a Corvette in a chop shop.”
“Still, I wanted to give you a heads-up. There are a lot of tight lips and strained looks around me, and I’m starting to wonder what they’re not telling me,” Vic grumbled.
“I’ll watch my back.”
“I’ve reached out to the Marshal Service and put them on notice that we might be putting you in Witsec.”
The fuck they were. “No.”
“Lucas—”
“I’m not hiding.”
“Dammit, you’re not a one-man army, and this isn’t the time for your pride to do the decision-making.”
“If they want me, they can try to take me, but if you put me in Witsec, you know what will happen. They’ll be doing anything possible to turn cops dirty to find out where I am, and you and I both know money will eventually talk loud enough to sway some of those guys. The whole damn program would be compromised…and for what?”
“Oh, I don’t know, to keep your ass alive,” Vic pointed out.
“While I’d rather keep my ass intact, it’s still not worth corrupting a whole program. If I need to, I’ll disappear, but through my own channels.”
Vic’s heavy sigh came through the line, and Lucas knew he’d won this round.
“One more thing…Aaron Stern is dead.”
Chloe’s ex-boyfriend’s name elicited a low growl from Lucas’ throat. How many times had he laid his hands on her? Called her horrible names? Abused her kids? Yeah, Lucas didn’t give one shit that the guy no longer wasted perfectly good air. “That’s…unfortunate.”
“It wasn’t just your run of the mill prison fight, and the guards are playing dumb, so watch your back because I’m starting to get that telltale itch that something’s not right.”
“I’m on it.”
“Chloe Crew won’t have to worry about him getting out or anyone using her to get to him anymore. At least that’s something.”
No, and that was all the more reason why he needed to stay far, far away from the woman. Hell, he’d talk to Zane, make sure she had protection for the time being, just in case. At least she worked in the center. No one would touch her here. Zane would make sure no one could touch her in her house.
They just had to get a lock on everywhere else. Which meant, despite this newfound happiness of hers, she’d have to take precautions in public. People with her at school functions and outings with the kids. Getting her groceries delivered. He or Zane could make sure to take her car to the gas station every couple of days to keep the tank full. Okay, Zane, because his close proximity would put her in danger.
A prison. They’d be putting her in a prison.
Shit.
“Vic, thanks for the heads-up, and let me know if anything changes.”
He hung up the phone and slumped against the wall. Sorelli still had tentacles in the area, but with him in jail and his assets frozen, they didn’t have much power. Without power, they were low-level thugs skittering about in back alleys, lying in wait, hunting more out of desperation than following orders.
The problem with desperation? It was messy, impulsive, and hard to anticipate. Fuck.
“Lucas?”
He scrubbed a hand over his jaw and closed his eyes at the sound of Chloe’s voice calling him from down the hall. Taking a deep breath, he glanced up at her and gave her a smile. “Yeah?”
“I was waiting. Brent said you were right behind him, but when you didn’t show up…”
She rubbed her thumb along her inner elbow, something he’d noticed her doing when he walked her home.
“I just had to take a call. Something up?” he asked as though they knew each other in passing. As if he’d never watched over her while she’d been tied to a metal chair.
Would there ever be a time when he’d deal with her where his mind wouldn’t go back to the moment of his single greatest shame?
Fuck.
She approached him with caution, or self-consciousness. It was hard to tell. “Yes, I, well—I wanted to talk to you about this, us working in the same space. I—we, we’ve been avoiding each other,” she stammered.
“You’re happy working here. I don’t want to interfere in that, Chloe.”
She twisted her hands together. “What if I want you to interfere?”
May-fucking-day. S-O-S. “Come again?”
“Not interfere per se, but you could say hi. We could grab lunch together sometimes. You know, be friends.”
Of course. Right on the heels of a phone call that was every damn reason why they shouldn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t be friends. The past two weeks, they could have been friends. They could have been friends all over the place. In his bed, in hers. He snorted. “Is that really what you want? To be friends?”
Narrowing her eyes, she straightened her shoulders and raised her chin. “To start, yes, I think I’d like that.”
He didn’t know why, but the suggestion set his blood on fire, and anger had the vein in his temple throbbing furiously. Every bit of cool, calm, and collected, something he thought he might just have a lifetime supply of, poofed into thin air.
He took a step toward her.
She’d shot venom at him on the walk home.
Another step.
Then they’d had an intimate moment between them, a fucked-up confession on his part.
And another step.
That slim hand of hers went to her throat, and she licked her bottom lip.
The last step closing the distance between them. His chest swelled and flexed with his ragged breathing.
Now she wanted to be friends? She really expected him to just shut that connection off and pretend the pulse that hammered between them, connecting them, was nothing more than a mild inconvenience?
That bond screamed for acknowledgment. No, he didn’t want to be friends. He didn’t want to pretend. He wanted to muss her up until that polite veneer slipped away, leaving nothing but the sassy ball of attitude in its wake.
Sinking his hand into her loose waves, he dragged her mouth under his and did what he’d been wanting to do for months. What honor screamed that he shouldn’t do. What he’d played over and over in his head as he fell asleep, what tortured him in his dreams, and what hung like a cloud over him each morning as his eyes cracked open.
Yeah, honor didn’t stand a chance because in this moment, they were in the center. They were protected. No one who might have it out for him could see or know what happened between them within these walls.
And just like that, he excused his way out of being honorable and unfairly put the burden on her. Even as her sweet taste burst on his tongue, he begged her in the recesses of his fucked up mind.
Save us, Chloe. Be afraid of me so I can walk away, damn you.
But he’d peeled away that professional exterior and exposed the underestimated woman within. Her nails scraped over his scalp as both hands went to his hair. Humming low in her throat, she opened her mouth to him as she pushed up on her tiptoes, lining up her every curve against him, proving that not a shred of her was afraid, and they were both fucked.
Every slide of her tongue against his burned him to the core. She gave as good as she got, her hands gripping him surprisingly tight, leaving a satisfying sting in its wake, proving that this wasn’t some timid little thing in his arms, but a warrior ready to fight for what she wanted.
Freedom.
Safety.
A new life.
And now him.
“Oops!”
An amused voice at the end of the hall had them jumping apart. Lucas looked over her shoulder, but whoever had come across them had already left.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Well, that was stupid.”
“Excuse me?” Chloe said, her voice low and tight, fury in her piercing olive eyes replacing the lusty haze that had been there just s
“You heard me.”
“You know what, Lucas? You’re a shit.”
Ahh, there she is.
“You’re only just figuring that out? Slow on the uptake, huh?”
“You—” she began pointing a finger right at him.
“You should stay away from me, Chloe,” he said quietly, cutting off whatever she intended to say.
“Who kissed who, Lucas? I just mentioned being friends, and you mauled me.”
“You weren’t complaining,” he pointed out. “You practically climbed me like a tree.”
Her hands curled over her hips. “Oh, you wish.”
“Tell me your claw marks aren’t in my scalp. I’m willing to bet there’s at least red scratches in there. See for yourself,” he said, bending over and angling his head at her.
She yanked a hunk of his hair, growled, and spun on her heel.
“You’re just mad because I’m right,” he called to her retreating back.
“I’m mad because you’re a heathen with no manners,” she tossed back over her shoulder.
“Says the girl who bit my lip.”
“Ugh!” Her hands balled into fists, and she turned to face him. “You know what, I don’t want to be friends.”
“Yeah, well, neither do I!”
They stood there, gazes locked from each end of the hall, their chests both heaving from their angry outbursts. His lips twitched, and they both burst out laughing at the same time.
Chloe laughed so hard tears leaked out of her eyes, and she slumped against the wall, her shoulders shaking.
God, the sound coming from her eased a cloud of guilt that plagued him. Not that it had vanished altogether, but it loosened, letting him recognize their mutual ridiculousness and enjoy it for what it was. Their past lay far behind them.
The questionable future?
Well, one thing at a time.
He’d do good to remember he might just be a marked man, and she was finally moving forward. He wouldn’t be the one to bring her tumbling down like so many men before him.
He walked over to where she had slid to the floor, her back against the wall, and joined her down there.
He gave her a nudge with his shoulder. “So, you’re not afraid of me then?”
“No, not afraid. I was more afraid of me, of my intuition, but I’ve got a handle on that now. At least for the time being. I’m a work in progress.”
“Aren’t we all?” Except he wasn’t. He wasn’t changing. He was existing. Moving from one project to the next with no real direction. “You finally seem to be climbing out of the hell you’ve been through, Chloe. I don’t want to drag you back down again.”
“Well, don’t make me out to be some paragon. I still have issues. I might always have issues.”
He glanced over to catch her digging at her inner elbow again.
“What’s the matter with your arm?”
Her startled eyes met his before they slid away, and she yanked her hand away. “Nothing.”
“That’s how you want to start this ‘friendship,’ by lying to your friend?”
She crossed her arms. “Well, you made it clear you weren’t my friend.”
“Chloe,” he warned.
“It’s nothing,” she said with a sigh. “Just the spot where they kept putting the needle. I don’t know why I rub at it so much.”
He took the arm in question and slid her blouse up, revealing the tender, creamy skin there. A half-inch wide discolored section mocked him. “You’re trying to scrub away what they did to you. What I did to you.”
“You never put the needle in me,” she said with a hard shake of her head.
He pressed a kiss to the inside of her elbow and pulled her sleeve back down over the spot. “You don’t know that.”
Her lips parted on a hitched breath. “Yes, I do.”
“How?”
“Because you would have blown that case all to hell before you ever betrayed me like that. I don’t know why you cared so much, and don’t tell me it was about my being innocent because I don’t buy it, but you never would have done that to me. Not when you knew firsthand what it would mean. What the consequences would be.”
He rested his forearms on his knees and let his head drop back to the wall behind him. Uncharted territory. His relationships had been perfunctory at best. He didn’t have the kind of life he could commit a second half to. Even now, he had no idea what to expect, and he didn’t have anywhere to be. No assignments. No job beyond this project with the center and the offer of more work with Fierce.
He could stay. See what happened.
Except for what Vic just told him. What if a week from now, a month, six months, Sorelli found someone calculating and driven enough to carry out revenge? Someone tenacious enough to be relentless until they had Lucas’ real name, his address, his everyday face?
But he could take off at the first hint of danger. Before she or her kids became a pawn in the sinister games of drug dealers and killers. He’d be up front with her brother. Get his advice. Make sure they were protected. And if Zane told him he was out of his ever-loving mind, he’d walk away.
“Say something, Lucas,” Chloe said.
“Friends?” he said, reaching out a hand to her.
She smiled and pushed up to her feet. Slipping her hand in his, she shook to seal the deal. “Sounds like as good a place as any to start a relationship,” she said before disappearing around the corner.
Well hell.
Chapter 4
“Tyler? Brielle? Hoof it. Uncle Zane and Aunt Kinsley are waiting for us,” Chloe called down the hall. She hopped on one foot, wobbled, propped herself against the wall, and yanked on her tennis shoe.
So, they’d be late. At least she was going in with an open mind. She’d just had her fourth session with Isabella yesterday to get ready for this. Isabella warned her to keep her temper in check. Make herself clear. And know when to listen.
Okay, that piece of advice chafed a bit, but she’d spent a lot of time in bed last night thinking it through, and in that time alone, she could admit that she hadn’t always been receptive to hearing what Zane had to say. She’d been stubborn and defensive. If she were honest, she hadn’t made any of this easy on him, or herself. She hadn’t been approachable. Instead, she’d been skittish and defensive, and it had only cost her more years.
For someone so angry about the time she’d lost with her best friend, she wasn’t helping to steer the ship back in the right direction.
This was so much easier to acknowledge in her head. The minute she saw her brother’s stubborn jaw, the whole idea of a truce might fly right out the window. But she’d get the ball rolling with a hard discussion about putting utilities in her name and paying rent as a way of paying him back for buying her a whole house.
She couldn’t picture a day where she could pay him back the entire balance plus the interest he would earn had it been anyone else, but they needed to find something that didn’t insult his inner alpha and didn’t cost her pride and independence.
“I can’t find Laney,” Brielle cried from her room.
Chloe found Brielle, her butt in the air, her torso lodged under her bed. She scanned the room looking for the American Girl doll Kinsley had custom-ordered for her birthday. Her gaze landed on a pile of books and a tiny plastic hand that peeked out from under the mound.
“Baby, were you trying to organize your books again?”
“Yes. I want them alphabetical now,” Brielle answered, her voice muffled.
“If you had finished, you might have found her,” Chloe said, kneeling next to the pile and making neat stacks for Brielle to go through later. She knew better than to do it for her. Her once wary, now confident little girl had mastered her letters, and when she did, her love affair with organizing everything by size ended in favor of using her new skills.
Brielle scurried out from under the bed and hopped up. “Laney!” she cried, running for her mother and the doll.
Chloe grunted as her not-so-little girl landed in her lap.
“You found her. Thank you, Mommy. I love you,” she said, wrapping her skinny arms around Chloe’s neck.
“I love you too, baby.” They were going to be late, but she didn’t care. How many days had she wished for just this? To have her kids’ biggest problems be something as simple as a misplaced toy? She’d longed for the simple days where she could hug them without shame and they could hug her without fear.
Now she had them, thanks in part to her brother. She didn’t know what to do or say about that, but she knew where to start.
Listening ears.
“Mommy, I’m happy there are no bad men now,” Brielle whispered into Chloe’s hair.
“Me too, baby. And there won’t be bad men ever again,” Chloe promised even as guilt pinched inside her, leaving an ache in her heart. Chloe pushed to her feet and took Brielle’s hand. “Come on, let’s go get your brother. What do you think he’s doing in there anyway?”
“Ugh, flexing his muscles like Uncle Zane,” Brielle said, scrunching up her little face. “Boys are weird.”
“So weird,” Chloe said with a smile.
Ten minutes later, they stood on the stoop of her brother’s house. Zane opened the door and for a second, she glimpsed the open face of the brother she used to know. Open for her children.
He lifted Brielle right up into the air. “Word has it that Kinsley has a treat waiting for you guys in the kitchen. You’d better go get it before I beat you to it,” he said, setting her back on her feet and giving Tyler a high five.
All smiles, he watched them head for the back of the house. Then his gaze landed on her and maybe stayed for all of three seconds tops before sliding away.
Ouch.
At one time, she’d assumed that was his look of disappointment and shame in her, in her actions, but Isabella’s words echoed in her head, and she considered that might just be his uncertainty showing through.
Would it be such a stretch that maybe he didn’t know what to say? What to do? After all, giving her a great big smile and a hug might be a huge leap, all things considered.
But she so wanted to get back to that one day. To understand the man he’d become and grieve for the young guy he’d left behind when he’d gone and grown up.
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