Yep, still stunning. Still sexy.
Still as deceptive and arrogant as hell.
He planted his ass in the comfortable chair, switched his attention back to the fake article in front of him that Roxanna had prepared for him to ‘proofread’. It was deliberately riddled with both factual and grammatical errors, and had come with a terse note for him to respect the deadline of four p.m. that day.
Griff sighed a bit, tugged his hat lower, then started to make the corrections. After all, a big part of successful undercover work was actually becoming whoever it was that he was meant to be… and right now, he was a guy who was focused on changing ‘there’ to ‘their’ and ‘your’ to ‘you’re’ and doing some research about seahorses – of all insane things – for an article for a nature magazine.
So he just got to it, just got to work. And waited to see what Claire would do, and when, and with whom. Whatever it was, whenever it was, with whoever it was, Griff was going to be her shadow.
Chapter Three
Emma Cartwright smiled down at the baby nestled at her breast. Frankie was sleepily sucking away, and she knew that he was seconds away from dropping off. Seeing as he’d barely slept the night before, she was grateful that he seemed ready to succumb now.
She stifled a yawn, gazed wistfully over at Olivia Foreman, née Jameson. Liv was holding a massive mug of the most fragrant-smelling coffee that Emma had ever come across. God, what she wouldn’t give to throw back a cup of the stuff…. but since she was breast-feeding, caffeine in her blood stream was not an awesome idea.
Liv caught her eye. “You OK, Em?”
“Hmmmm.” Emma shifted a bit, pushed her dark curls behind her ears. “Just waking up and smelling the coffee.”
“Sorry,” Liv said quickly. “I can dump it out.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Emma said. “Enjoy it for both of us.”
“More tea, Em?” Jennifer Lawson asked from her large, bright kitchen. “Maybe a bit of toast? I got some low-fat peanut butter for you, just like you asked.”
Emma looked over at the oven with longing. “What are you baking?”
Jenny grinned. “One guess…”
“Cinnamon buns?”
“Uh-huh.” Jenny brushed her blonde hair back over her shoulders. “I promised Chris that he’d have some for breakfast tomorrow, and I always make a dozen extra.”
“So…. forget the toast, then.” Emma shrugged. “To hell with trying to lose the baby weight today. Gimme the fat and sugar.”
“And icing sugar,” Beth Harper chimed in. “And cinnamon!”
“That too,” Emma agreed.
“I can do all of that, hon.” Jenny checked the buns through the glass door. “Five minutes.”
“In the meantime…” Beth said.
The other women perked up right away.
“You brought them?” Liv asked.
“Yep,” Beth said.
“How many have you got stuffed in your backpack?” Emma asked, hugely amused.
“Uh.” Beth paused, mentally added things up. “Well, I bought two, but um… Jim bought a few.”
“Jim?” Liv echoed. “He – he bought some?”
“Yeah.”
“How many is ‘a few’?” Jenny asked.
“Five.” Beth’s voice was hushed.
“Jim bought five bridal magazines?” Emma said in utter disbelief. “All by himself?”
“He did. He said he was going to buy some milk for our morning coffee, and then an hour later, he walked in loaded down with magazines… and no milk.” Beth cocked her dark head. “But he also had a magazine of his own, and he was all like, ‘I was buying this for myself anyway, and while I was in the press section, I just happened to see these magazines for you, sweetheart’.”
“What magazine did he buy for himself?” Jenny asked, dying to know the answer. “Please tell me that it was a cooking magazine or something like that.”
“Nope.” Beth paused dramatically. “He bought ‘Guns&Ammo’. Looked all tough sitting there reading it with a beer in his hand.”
The women all burst into laughter. The thought of scowling, mostly-silent Jim Alden perusing the bridal magazine section was – literally – unimaginable. But it was also the surest sign that under that tough, towering exterior was a good man. A man who loved Beth with everything that he had and was, and who was going to do whatever he could to make her happy.
Not a bad guy to be marrying, really.
“Do you figure that it was a kind of counterbalancing and prophylactic measure against all the lace and flower arrangements?” Emma said. “A way to reassert his masculinity and general bad-assedness?”
“Oh, definitely,” Beth said. “No doubt.”
“OK, so…” Liv sat up straighter. “Bring ‘em! Let’s start to plan your wedding, Beth… starting with the dress.”
Just then, Emma’s purse on the entrance table trilled, and she sighed heavily. But Liv, Jenny and Beth all laughed again and said in unison, “Dean.”
“For sure,” Emma said.
“Want me to get it?” Beth asked her. “My backpack’s over by the door anyway.”
“Please.”
Beth wandered through Jenny’s massive kitchen, down the hallway to the front door. The other women heard her say, “Hi Dean.” A pause. Then, “No, she’s fine. I’m answering because she’s feeding Frankie, and he’s just settling.” Another pause. “No, really… she’s fine. They both are.” Silence. “You’re going to make me put her on, aren’t you?”
Liv and Jenny exchanged grins, and Emma shook her head and prayed hard for patience. She knew why Dean was so reluctant to let her and Frankie out of his sight; why when he did finally let them go, he called her every thirty minutes on the dot; why he insisted that she call him the second that she and Frankie got home safe and sound.
Henri Delacroix was the reason, of course. The fact that he’d stabbed Emma in the stomach and sent her into premature labor, endangering both her life and Frankie’s, was something that Dean was never, ever going to forget. Dean had gotten to her in time to be there when his son was born, and thank God for Mark Hayden – the man was now a bodyguard, but he was also a trained doctor – who had been there to deliver the baby. It had all turned out OK in the end… but Dean wasn’t over almost losing her, about damn near losing his son. He probably wouldn’t ever be, Emma knew.
So that was why she extended her hand to take the cell from Beth, and why she didn’t so much as release the slight sigh that was fluttering around in her chest.
“Hi, babe,” she said quietly.
“Angel.” Dean’s gravely voice was tight. “You doing alright?”
“Yes. We both are.”
“He’s sleeping?”
Emma glanced down at their son again. “Yep. At long last.”
“And you’re really OK?” he insisted. “Not too tired to drive home? I can come and get you if you are…”
“I’m OK to drive, Dean. I promise.”
“But you’re exhausted, baby. I know you are.”
“Sure I am,” she agreed. “And so are you.”
“I’m fine,” he huffed and she grinned at his need to reassert his macho-ness. “And it’s gonna snow later, so I want you to leave Jenny’s before noon. No stops, no delays… straight home. Clear?”
Emma shut her dark blue eyes, finding patience a bit harder to come by at this very second. Yeah, OK, the man was protective as hell, but come on. He had to start to release his iron grip at some point… though maybe this wasn’t the exact moment to start to insist on him seeing reason.
“OK,” she said amiably, deciding that they were going to have the ‘come-to-Jesus’ talk that very night. “I’ll leave by noon.”
“And you’ll go straight home.”
“Yes. I’ll go straight home.”
“You call me when you walk in the door,” he carried on, relentless. “The second you do.”
“I will.”
“OK. Lov
e you, angel. Give Frankie a kiss for me.”
“I will. I love you, too.”
She disconnected the call, put the cell down on the coffee table in front of her, and finally let the small sigh escape. The other women watched her carefully, wondering if Emma was actually going to talk a bit about the weird tension that Dean’s calls usually evoked in her.
As usual, it was Beth who dove into the water head-first, and started the conversation that they’d all been studiously avoiding.
“So,” Beth said, all casual. “How many hours a day does Dean let you out of your cell? Normally, prisoners get a couple of hours in the yard. For exercise and fresh air and so on.”
“Beth,” Jenny hissed from the kitchen island where she was plating up the freshly-baked cinnamon buns. “Good sweet Lord.”
“What?” Beth rejoined. “You think I could have been more delicate in bringing it up?”
“Uh, yeah.” Liv rolled her chocolate-brown eyes. “But then again, the sledgehammer approach is kind of your thing.”
“Still,” Jenny reproved, bringing the tray of food. “Would it kill you to aim for subtlety? Just once in a while?”
“Nope,” Beth said breezily. “But it wastes time, and frankly Em, I’m worried about you. You and Dean.”
“You – why?” Emma said. “I mean, I can understand you thinking that he’s overreacting, but why are you worried?”
“Because.” Beth dropped the joking tone now. “Every single time that damn phone rings, you tense up like it’s a kidnapper on the other end making a ransom demand.”
“I don’t –” Emma began, but then to all of their surprise, it was Jenny who decided to simply refuse to entertain her b.s. for one second longer, and cut her off.
“Oh, Christ, Em.” Jenny set down the tray on the coffee table. “Don’t bother denying it, OK? You look like you’re being force-fed rat poison every time you have to answer that damn phone. Now.” She brushed her long blonde hair back and over her shoulders, glared at the stunned Emma in front of her. “What’s. The. Goddamn. Deal?”
“Uh.” Emma blinked and looked at Beth and Liv; she saw the same shock and awe on their faces that she was sure was written all across hers. “Well… he’s just – he’s being a bit –” She broke off, seeking the right word.
Once again, Jenny took them all aback.
“Stifling?” Jenny said crisply. “Overbearing? Domineering?”
“I was going to say ridiculously overprotective,” Emma said. “But all of those work, too.”
“Oh, sweetie.” Jenny sat down next to her on the sofa, her voice gentling. “You can’t be surprised.”
“I know,” Emma said. “I don’t blame Dean for worrying about us, but I also didn’t think that it would be quite this bad. I mean, I expected the checking in… but every half hour? That seems a bit – much.”
The other women nodded.
“And the way that he needs to know every single place that we go to before he even lets us walk out the door,” Emma said, speaking more easily now, like she’d finally given herself permission to say some of these secret thoughts out loud. “He needs a place-by-place plan, and an ETA, and if he calls and I’m not where I said I’d be at that exact moment, he asks what happened to prevent me from getting there. And nothing prevents me, you know? It’s not like I’m being help captive. Sometimes I have to stop and feed Frankie, or change his diaper, or we get stuck in traffic, and God help me if I decide to stop for an unscheduled coffee that wasn’t approved in advance.”
“He gets upset?” Liv asked quietly.
“He gets angry,” Emma replied. “He gets furious. Like… like I’m in defying him by not being where he thought I was. He’s obsessed with monitoring my every little movement, and I don’t know how much more I can take… even if I do understand where it’s all coming from, and I know that Dean isn’t a controlling asshole at heart.”
The women all contemplated that. Finally, Beth spoke.
“Maybe it’s more about – about how if you needed help, he’d have no idea where you were at the time? Maybe it’s less about controlling your movements, and more about him feeling helpless about being able to keep you both safe, all the time and everywhere?”
They all stared at her.
“Uh, actually…” Emma stroked the sleeping baby’s hair. “That makes – lots of sense.”
“Right?” Beth said. “I mean, just look at the guys. Look at Dean, Dallas, Jim and Chris… in all the time that we’ve known them, and all the shit we’ve all been through together, I think we can agree that they’re at their most frantic when they’re not able to keep us safe, or control the environment or situation. When they have to step aside, or wait it out, or just watch what’s going on. They hate it. Plus? They suck at it.”
They all laughed now, then quickly shushed when Frankie made a small, plaintive sound.
“Yeah, OK,” Emma said, rocking the baby. “You make some pretty impressive points. Irrefutable ones, too.”
“You going to talk to him, then?” Jenny asked. “I’d bet anything that Dean is totally aware that he’s behaving like a raving lunatic, but maybe he doesn’t totally understand why that is.”
“Yes,” Emma said. “Yes. Tonight. I’ll talk to him tonight.”
**
“You know that you’re behaving like a fucking lunatic, right?” Jim Alden growled at Dean. “You are aware of this small matter?”
“I’m not!” Dean protested, still tapping away at his cell. “I’m just – checking in.”
“Every thirty minutes.” Dallas Foreman chimed in now. “On the dot.”
“And it’s ‘on the dot’ because you set up your cell ringer as a reminder,” Chris Brooker added. “You just set it again now, didn’t you?”
“Did not,” Dean said, clearly lying through his damn teeth. “I was just checking my e-mail.”
Dallas extended his hand. “Fine, then. Gimme the phone, Jessop. Let me see if you’ve set up the next alarm to go off in precisely twenty-nine minutes and…” With a flourish, he checked his watch. “Forty-two seconds.”
Dean shoved his cell into his jeans pocket. “No.”
“Dean.” Jim’s voice was softer now. “C’mon, man. What the hell’s goin’ on with you?”
“Nothing.”
“In all the years that I’ve known you,” Chris said. “You have always been a crap liar, and you haven’t improved in the slightest that whole time.” His gray eyes were wide and worried. “We all understand why you’re acting like a crazy person, OK? Hell, if any of our women had been stabbed and almost lost their baby, we’d be worried about letting them out of our sight, and we all know that. But this… this obsessive checking and calling and plotting Emma’s every movement? That’s over-the-top, Dean. You do know that, right? Even a little bit?”
“I – well…” Dean sighed. “Yeah. I know. But I can’t seem to stop doing it.”
“Well, admitting powerlessness is the first step to recovery,” Dallas announced, ignoring Dean’s cool, mint-green glare. “And that’s the real problem here. You do know that, right?”
“What is?” Dean asked.
“Powerlessness.”
“Over setting the cell alarm?” Dean asked, sarcasm dripping from every word. “Is there a twelve-step program for that?”
“Nope,” Dallas said, his blue eyes cloudy with concern, deliberately not taking the bait. “Being powerless over keeping Emma and Frankie totally safe from being hurt again.”
Dean paused, stared at Dallas wide-eyed. “What?”
“You heard me, man. Don’t play dumb.”
“I’m not!” Dean repeated. “I’m playing incredulous. Do you actually think that I’m trying to… to keep the dangers of the world at bay by talking to Emma every thirty minutes? That I actually believe that I can keep her safe from harm forever – her and Frankie – if I know where they are every second of the fucking day? That I’m so desperate to do whatever I can to hold on to them, I’ll b
asically stalk the woman that I love?”
“Uh.” Dallas cocked his dark head. “Well. Yeah.”
Dean shot a scowl over at Jim and Chris, but they were calmly staring right on back, and nodding in agreement with Dallas.
“Yep, I’d say that you just about summed up what we’re thinking,” Jim said. “Except I’d add that you also seem to be under the delusion that basically holding your woman and kid prisoner in your home is a long-term strategy for relationship security.”
“Fuck off, Alden,” Dean grated out. “I’m not holding anyone prisoner.”
“Well, actually,” Chris chimed in. “You really are. Expecting Emma to report in on a schedule, and give you a detailed explanation of her movements, and provide explanations as to her whereabouts when she’s not where she’s supposed to be… seems kinda prisoner-y to me.” He considered. “Except that actual prisoners have slightly more freedom.”
“Brooker, goddammit,” Dean began, but before he could tell Chris to fuck off too, Dallas stepped back in.
“OK, enough,” he drawled. “We ain’t really attacking you, man.”
“Feels like it,” Dean muttered.
“That’s just ‘cause we’re unsubtle assholes, as Olivia constantly reminds me,” Dallas said cheerfully. “Lack finesse and all that good stuff.”
Finally, Dean cracked a smile. “Damn right.”
“We’re worried about you,” Dallas said. “You and Emma.”
“Guys, look.” Dean took a deep breath, slowed his heart rate. “I know I’m acting like a lunatic. I do. I know that it’s making Emma nuts, and she’s just sweet and aware enough to play along and be patient. I also think that she gets where I’m coming from, and she’s sympathetic.”
“But?” Chris prompted.
“But…” Dean shook his head. “She’s reaching the end.”
“Can you blame her?” Jim said.
“Nope. Not even a little bit. But…”
“But?” Chris said again.
“But I worry about her, and I mean all the time. I worry about Frankie, too. I just – I only really feel calm when they’re in my line of vision. The second they’re out of it… I start to worry.” He hesitated, then decided to just go ahead and be as honest as possible. These three men were, after all, his brothers under the skin, and there was zero sense hiding anything from them. “I worry that I’ll lose them. I don’t know what I’d do if I did… I’d never come back from that, you know?”
Solid Gold (Unseen Enemy Book 8) Page 4