by Lexi Blake
He shoved against Cam’s bulk. Did the country boy expect the city boy to play fair? Rafe was done playing fair. It bought him nothing with Cam. He shoved out with both hands, and Cam fell back, stumbling over his sadly worn duffel bag.
“What were you thinking, Cam? Did you already have your bags packed when you came to see me? Do you honestly believe you can waltz back into her life? What do you have to offer her? You going to bring her back here?”
Cam’s leg came out, sweeping across Rafe’s ankles and knocking him down. Cam kicked himself up, years and years of martial arts practice turning the move into a graceful dance. Cam moved well for a man of any size, much less for a man who weighed in at two hundred and fifty pounds of pure muscle.
“And what are you going to give her? Are you going to bring her back to your condo and turn her into some trophy for your goddamn wall? She never meant anything to you. She was nothing more than a prize. You only wanted her to fuck with me.” Cam stopped, his face going dumb for a minute. “Damn it, Rafe. What the fuck are we doing? I’m…”
Whatever Cam was going to say was utterly lost on him. All he knew was they had had this fight before. He was so fucking sick of having his money shoved back at him like it was something to be ashamed of. Cam wielded his impoverished childhood like a sword, and Rafe was done with it. City boy was done taking country boy’s shit. With ruthless precision, he brought his foot up and kicked out. His heel met with Cam’s cock, and Cam went down with a long, animal-like moan of pure agony.
Rafe rolled over and shoved himself to a standing position. He wiped the blood off his face. It was time to have a long talk with his ex-partner. They used to be best friends, and damn, but he missed the dumbass country boy.
“You got any beer in this hellhole?”
Cam’s face was mottled up in a mask of pain. He cupped his crotch, but he nodded toward the fridge. “It tastes like piss, but it’s cold.”
Rafe grabbed two beers and helped Cam to the couch.
“You’re a fucking bastard.” Cam groaned as he gingerly lowered himself to the cushions.
“Yeah, because you’re so damn upstanding.” His jaw was still throbbing as he propped his feet on Cam’s wobbly coffee table. He took a long drink of the beer. Cam was right. It tasted like piss.
“I don’t try to come off as Captain America.”
Rafe rolled his eyes. “Well, at least I don’t try to be the tough guy every minute of the day. Look, I really was concerned about you. I don’t want you going off the deep end again.”
Cam was too obsessive. Now that he was looking around the tiny apartment, he was even more concerned. There were printouts stacked to precarious heights. The only books in the place seemed to be about coding, and stuck all over the walls were handwritten lines of code on sticky notes. Cam had always been the guy who sank into a case. He needed someone to pull him out, and Rafe hadn’t been there.
“That was the best year of my life,” Cam said quietly.
Rafe knew exactly what he meant. That year before Laura had left had meant the world to him, too. It started as a joke. They had dared the gorgeous blonde profiler to date both of them. She had told them she didn’t have the time. They would have to date her together.
They had gone to a movie and then a bar. The three of them had sat and talked until they were kicked out at closing time. It had only gotten awkward when they dropped her off. No one had gotten a kiss that night. And then they had settled into a friendship.
Months had passed, and she somehow became the center of their worlds. He’d been unwilling to push her to choose because she seemed to care about Cam so much. Cam had come alive. His thick, protective shell had cracked. Rafe had felt like a better person for knowing her.
And they had fucked up everything in a twenty-four-hour period.
“I have to see her again.” Rafe had to stand in front of her, if only to beg her forgiveness.
“Do you still want her?” Cam asked.
“More than I want my next breath.”
A long sigh came from Cam. “I want her, too. I’ve tried dating. I’ve been so mad at Laura that I’ve tried to fuck her out of my heart. I just feel…god, this is stupid. I feel dirty after I sleep with someone else.”
“It’s not stupid, man. I feel the same way.” His dick had languished in limbo for the last eight months. That had been the last time he’d gone to bed with a woman and it had been a spectacular failure. He belonged to Laura. It was wrong to sleep with someone else.
Cam ran a hand through his hair, an obvious sign of frustration. “What the hell are we going to do? She walked away from us. Even if, by some miracle, we can make her want us again, she didn’t want to choose.”
The answer was staring them right in the face. “Okay, so we don’t make her choose.”
Cam sat up. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“If we want to have a chance with her, if we want to get her to forgive us, we’re going to have to give her everything she wants.”
“Everything?” Cam asked. “I thought what we did that night was perverted. That’s what you said to me the next morning.”
“Well, we fucked the same girl at the same time. I think that’s a little perverted by anyone’s standards.” He let that sit for a minute. “But it was also hot. I liked watching. I think we can make it work. We can share her. People do it. Somewhere.” Rafe let his head fall back. Damn, he’d missed Cam. “I think I have a plan on how to get her to accept us, well, force her to accept us. Though it will probably make her mad. We’ll have to hang out in that little town of hers for a while. And it totally takes us off the case.”
“I’m okay with that. Laura’s the important thing here.”
Cam was right. They had put the case above her feelings before. It was time the case took a backseat.
“So we’re going to Bliss. What a name.” Rafe tipped back his beer. “You know, we’re going to have to be aggressive. We’re going to have to go after her hard and fast and together.”
Cam settled back. “That might not go over so well in a small town.”
“So what? You aren’t a guy who minds a little scandal.”
“Nope,” Cam agreed. “But I didn’t mind being the bad boy of the Bureau, either. It might bother you.”
“She’s worth it.” He wasn’t going to let some societal taboo keep him from Laura. Never again. Five years without her had taught him what he wanted. He’d spent years feeling incomplete. He couldn’t go the rest of his life without knowing where she was, and he was pretty sure that once he found her, he would do whatever it took to stay in her life. If he had to share her with his best friend, then that was what he would do.
An hour later everything was in place, including their airline tickets and a rental car. Within twenty-four hours, they would be in Bliss.
Rafe hoped Bliss was ready for a little scandal.
* * * *
Deep in the night, he watched. It was easy to blend into this particular part of the city. All he had to do was look hungry.
That wasn’t hard. He was always hungry.
That little meal he’d had the week before hadn’t even begun to take the edge off what he needed. The whore had gone down far too easily. A few taps and she’d knelt at his feet. The fight she’d put up had been halfhearted, as though she hadn’t truly minded dying.
Oh, she’d minded the pain. She’d howled, but even that had been sad compared to his rabbit.
When he closed his eyes, he saw her blonde beauty stretched out on his rack. He saw her eyes filled with rage. She wouldn’t have gone down easy. He could have played his game with her for days and never gotten bored.
Oh, the plans he’d had for her until the clever bitch had managed to escape.
She’d won that round. She wouldn’t win again.
He’d known all he had to do was follow the horny men. They would do the work for him. The rabbit had run, but she couldn’t hide forever.
Now all h
is plans were coming together. It was fate. He hadn’t actually meant for the feds to find his latest kill, but he wasn’t upset about it either. It would throw them off.
He adjusted the device in his ear as he took another long drink of the green tea he’d placed in a forty-ounce beer container. There he was another bum looking to get drunk on a Thursday night. He pulled the hood over his head despite the heat.
He’d listened in on Cameron Briggs’s completely worthless life for years. Now he finally had something to show for it.
Bliss, Colorado.
He got up, and by the time he reached his car three blocks away, he’d shed his bum persona. No one would know him now.
He’d found his pretty rabbit. It was time to go hunting again.
Chapter Two
Laura Niles studied herself in the mirror. She had to admit the peach color Brooke Harper had selected for the bridesmaids’ dresses warmed up her skin tone.
“I don’t think there’s enough fabric in the world,” a sad voice said beside her.
Laura looked over at Callie Hollister-Wright. She was almost eight months pregnant, and she was lovely to Laura’s eyes, but she was also very, very round. “You look beautiful. Brooke needs to let it out a bit, that’s all.”
Callie sniffled as she stared at herself in the mirror. She hadn’t been able to zip up the back of her dress. “Maybe I should let someone else take my place. Brooke can’t keep letting the dress out.”
“Yes, I can,” Brooke said with a vibrant smile. “For what Stef’s paying me, I will happily let that sucker out twice during the ceremony if I have to.”
Brooke patted Laura on the shoulder. She leaned in. “I need to take up your hem, but I’d like to get Callie done first so she can go rest. Do you mind?”
Callie needed to be off her feet. Laura took a step back. “Not at all. I don’t have to be at work today. I’ll sit down with Nell and Holly. You let me know if I can help.”
Laura couldn’t miss the way Callie gave her a once-over as she stepped away. She could guess what Callie was thinking. Callie was wishing she had her body. How could she tell Callie that she would change bodies with her in an instant? She would do it without ever missing her own body because despite her perfect size-six figure, she would never be round and full like Callie was now. She would never complain about swallowing a beach ball or how she waddled or how often the baby growing inside her kicked. She could never be pregnant, and Callie couldn’t know how that made her ache inside.
“I think it is so nice of you to write that man,” Nell was saying as Laura made her way from the makeshift dressing room through the souvenir aisle. Laura walked into the teeny-tiny tearoom at the Trading Post that overlooked Main Street.
“Well, I figured he must be lonely. He’s in a foreign country after all,” Holly said, taking a sip of tea as she looked over a letter.
Laura banished her sad thoughts and felt a smile crinkle her lips. Holly was such a bullshitter. “Are you seriously trying to pass off your prison love letters as some community service project? Nell, she and Alexei have been trading flirty letters. She’s not trying to save his soul.”
Nell looked up and smiled that ridiculously brilliant smile of hers. Whenever Laura got in a bad mood, all she had to do was get Nell to smile to force one of her own. Nell genuinely believed all the crap she pushed. She believed in the good of man. She believed in saving the Earth. Nell believed, and Laura thought it was a lovely thing. “Well, it wasn’t like Alexei did something terrible. I mean the ‘killing people’ thing was awful and all, but have you heard about what the Russian mob does? It’s horrible. And they don’t recycle.”
“And it’s not prison love,” Holly said with a prim sigh. “It’s witness protection friendship. He’s in witness protection while the trial is going on. I have no idea if this thing we have is going to go anywhere once the trial is over. It’s a friendship. With some flirting. Although honestly, I don’t know if he’s flirting. I still don’t understand half the things he says to me. He doesn’t write English any better than he speaks it. Like this—‘Holly, you are very cold woman. I wish to see you once more to spend the times with you, not to do hooking thing, but to talk, to know the real womens inside you.’ I think he might think I’m a cold-blooded prostitute with multiple personality disorder.”
Laura let her head fall back, the giggle coming from a place deep inside her. It was easy to let go of the pains of the past when she was surrounded by her friends. “Oh, I don’t think so, sweetie. Let me translate for you. He thinks you’re a cool chick. He wants to spend time with you, but not to hook up. He wants to know who you are inside. He’s crazy about you.”
Holly flushed, her skin turning almost as red as her hair. “I doubt that. He’s so young. I’m almost forty. I have a teenager.”
Nell reached across the table, her hand rubbing over Holly’s. “You’re a wonderful woman, Holly. Any man would be lucky to be with you.”
“Speaking of men,” Laura said, reaching for the sugar, “has the doc finally gotten past the stuttering stage?”
Doctor Caleb Burke had been circling around Holly like a socially awkward shark.
Holly folded the letter and put it in her purse. She let her head sink down to her hand. “Well, he manages to start sentences, but then he always asks for coffee and then goes quiet again. I don’t know what to do with him. Everyone says he likes me, but he never talks to me. My love life is sad. I have one man who can’t get two words out around me and another who barely speaks my language. I’m going to die alone.”
“Nope,” Laura said to her best friend. “I’ll be right there with you.”
Nell and Holly both sat forward.
“Did the stud turn out to be a dud?” Holly asked, her eyes wide.
Nell shook her head Holly’s way. “Wolf has a mind, Holly. It’s not a good thing to sexually objectify the man.”
The man in question chose that moment to walk across the street. Wolf Meyer was a stud. Nell was flat wrong. There was no way to not sexually objectify that hot hunk of man. The former Navy SEAL stood long and lean in his jeans and a T-shirt that hugged his strong, muscular chest. His hair was dark, but there was very little of it. He looked like the military man he was.
And he was coming her way. Laura gave him a wave through the window. They’d gone out on exactly two dates. She’d kissed him once before she had realized it wouldn’t work. There was no spark between them beyond friendship, but Wolf Meyer was a good man to know.
“God, that man is hot as hell.” Nell’s mouth hung open. She slapped her hands across it as if she could push the words back in. “Please don’t tell Henry I said that.”
“Your secret’s safe with us.” Holly winked Laura’s way.
It was always nice when Nell slipped a bit and proved she was wholly human. “He’s a yummy man, but it didn’t work out.”
It hadn’t worked out between Wolf and her for several reasons. Though they had a lot in common, they still felt more like friends than lovers, but she feared the reasons went far deeper for her. It hadn’t worked out because Wolf wasn’t Cameron Briggs or Rafael Kincaid. How could those two men still affect her all these years later? She’d told herself time and time again that she was over them, so why had she been unable to get them out of her head? Why had she seen their faces when Wolf Meyer had leaned over her and bent his head for a kiss?
“Ladies,” Wolf said, the word rolling off his tongue with lazy charm.
“Hi,” Holly managed to squeak.
Nell simply waved and took a long drink of her tea.
“What’s up with you, Wolf?” Laura asked.
He gave her a sexy smile that had her wishing things were different between them. “Well, I was actually looking for you.”
“OMG! The dress is gorgeous. Brooke is a genius!” Jen Waters’s voice rang out as she opened the door to the Trading Post and glided in with Rachel Harper in tow. There was a sling around Rachel’s body, and a fat baby face
peeked out. Paige Harper was the sweetest thing Laura had seen in forever.
But her momma did not look amused. “Nell, we need to have a talk.”
Nell smiled up, seeming to not notice Rachel’s narrowed eyes or the flat set of her mouth. “I would love to talk to you, Rachel.”
Rachel was not amused. “What the hell are you doing? Midwifery? Seriously?”
Nell opened her arms as though ready to embrace anything that came her way. “Yes. I have decided to study the ancient art of midwifery since it seems we’re having a baby boom in Bliss. I’ve tried to talk to everyone about population control, but I’ve given this a lot of thought. It makes sense that you and Max and Rye would have little Paige. And Callie is having her baby with two men. If you all weren’t in polyamorous relationships, you might have had more children. When you think about it, it’s a thoughtful way to raise a family. So, I think I should help bring this new generation of human beings into the world as naturally as possible.”
Rachel kept one hand on her daughter as she stalked Nell. “Look, Callie is one of my closest friends in the world. She’s one of the sweetest human beings I have ever met.”
Nell nodded, her dark hair shaking. “I agree. Callie has a beautiful soul. Her aura is so pure. The shaman I’ve been learning from says a pure aura is important.”
Wolf snorted and then sat down, his huge body perched precariously on the delicate chair. “You’re learning to deliver babies from a shaman?”
“Oh, yes,” Nell replied. “She’s brilliant. She’s in touch with all the ley lines that run through the valley. It’s where she pulls her energy from. She’s from Del Norte, like you, Wolf.”
Wolf’s eyebrows rose on his face. “Are you talking about crazy Irene? She works at the Dairy Queen.”
Nell waved off that tidbit of information. “The universe leads us where it will. She’s recommended a home water birth for Callie’s son. Oh, and Rachel, she’s already had a vision of your daughter and Callie’s son. Don’t tell Max, but they get married. And some guy named Charlie. I don’t know who he is.”