“Eva, I love all of your sisters, Maddie isn’t going to be the exception,” he assured her. He smiled at her look of relief.
That had been two days ago in San Diego. Since that conversation, she had been burning up the telephone lines with Maddie, Chloe, and Zoe. She knew they were only going to be in Tennessee for two days and she planned to make the most of it.
Evie was practically vibrating with excitement. If she hadn’t convinced him last night in bed, he’d be convinced today that she was completely healed.
“There’s her car. Park there. She must be in the office.” Evie pointed to a little white Toyota.
He parked the car, and as they were getting out, he saw Maddie Avery walking toward them wearing white shorts and a red top. “Hell, Evie, you are the shortest, aren’t you?”
“Maddie!” she squealed.
The sisters ran to one another and hugged for a long moment. Then the younger girl burst into tears. Aiden wasn’t surprised, Trenda had had a similar reaction when she’d first seen Evie. All of the women were emotional about Evie’s kidnapping.
He could hear Evie soothing her sister. Maddie might be taller, but it was abundantly clear who was the ‘big’ sister.
“Come on, Honey, it’s all right. Let’s get out of the sun. We’ll do the sorting later. We need to go get some iced tea. How does that sound?”
Soon they were in the rental car, and Evie pointed them toward a small building that said Polly’s Restaurant. It was well known to both women. “It has the best pie in the world. You’ll love it, Aiden.”
“It can’t be better than Trenda’s pie,” he said. It couldn’t. That woman could bake.
“Wait and see,” was all Evie would say.
Aiden split his concentration on the road and the rearview mirror, studying Maddie. She was studying him just as fiercely. It turned out that Evie had a protector. He was impressed.
Evie pointed to a tidy building. The parking lot was bursting at the seams. That was always a good sign. It reminded him of the café where Mason’s wife worked.
“There’s a spot,” Evie said and pointed to an empty parking spot. He took it. He was hungry, but he resigned himself to a long wait since there were people sitting outside on the two benches.
“Why don’t you go get us a table. You’ve been away for a while, and Polly will be ecstatic to see you.”
Evie grinned and nodded. Aiden opened the door for her, and she went inside. Maddie didn’t waste any time.
“So Evie’s going to move in with you? Are you going to break her heart again?”
Aiden opened his mouth to say ‘No,’ when he took a moment to really look at Maddie. Her hands were open by her side, but they were trembling ever so slightly. When he looked into her eyes, he saw that behind the bravado, she was a little scared confronting him. But she was doing it anyway. Aiden admired that.
“Maddie, I promise you, I’m not going to hurt Evie ever again. I would cut off an arm before I would do anything to make her cry.”
She swallowed. “Then why did you?”
“That’s between me and her. But please know, I thought I was protecting her.”
Maddie gripped the end of her ponytail and twirled it. “Evie’s special. She would go to the mat for you, and it would be-” Her voice broke, and she looked down.
Aiden looked over and saw Evie still talking to the woman at the hostess stand. He guided Maddie to one of the benches that had just opened up and sat down with her.
“What, Honey?”
“She’s so used to taking care of everyone else, it would just be nice if someone was finally watching her back. You know?”
“Consider me her protector.”
“I thought I could trust Jim and Blake, and look what they did.” She sounded so forlorn. The woman was right. Evie had been let down by so many men in her life, including him.
“Please be for real,” she whispered.
“Maddie, she’s my life.”
She stopped fiddling with her hair and looked at him. Really looked at him, then nodded.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Evie heading toward the door. “Wait here.” He got up and opened the door for her. “What’s the wait time?” he asked.
“What wait time? Our table is ready. We’re practically family.” Maddie was already standing at his elbow.
“Well okay then, good food with two beautiful women, what more could a man ask for?”
***
They got a call at the restaurant that the twins were five miles out of town, so they headed back to the storage facility. When they got to their unit, they were waiting for them.
“What is this?” Evie demanded, looking at the dilapidated Ford 350 the twins had parked in front of the storage unit.
“It’s Clive’s. He let us borrow it,” Zoe said.
Chloe laughed. “Let is a relative term. Zoe finally gave in and promised to go out with him if he would let us borrow it for the weekend.”
“Why in the hell did you want to borrow this piece of shit?” Evie demanded looking at the red truck outfitted with a gun rack, stripper mud flaps, and silver nut sack hanging from the trailer hitch.
“We figured there would be some furniture we could have. We moved into a place off campus. I’ve been saving for some furniture, so I’m not sure how much we’re going to take of yours. You know our tastes don’t always match, Evie,” Chloe explained cautiously.
Maddie let out a choked sound.
“Speak for yourself, I’ve always wanted those purple chairs. You’ll never be able to find some of the stuff she has at any stinking furniture store,” Zoe protested.
Aiden had forgotten about the purple chairs. Now that he thought about it, he was kind of glad she didn’t want to take any of her furniture or fixtures to California.
“I saw that.” Evie smacked her hand against his abdomen.
“What?”
“You just had a vision of my purple chairs in your living room, and you winced.”
“I did not wince.”
“He so didn’t,” Chloe agreed. “But he should have. Trenda showed us pictures of his house. It’s the bomb. Seriously, you are not allowed to do any decorating. You and Zoe are never allowed near a furniture store.”
“What are you talking about?” Zoe demanded of her twin.
“You’re practically color blind. You chose turquoise, lemon, orange, and red to decorate the kitchen.”
“Yeah, it rocks,” Zoe said as Aiden opened up the large door of the storage unit.
“Score!” Zoe unhitched the back of the truck and rolled out a moving blanket. She was clearly excited. Chloe and Evie headed into the locker and Maddie watched her sisters with indulgence.
“Aren’t you going to get into this action?” Aiden asked.
“Nah. Luckily, Zoe’s excited enough for everyone, and I have pretty much everything I need.”
“What are you going to do with the money you get from your Grandmother’s estate?” he asked.
“That’ll go into a savings account.”
“Maddie, there’s an orange floor lamp. Do you want this, or can we take it?” Zoe shouted.
“Please say you want it,” Chloe begged.
“It’s all yours.” Maddie shuddered.
Aiden must have blocked the memory of the orange floor lamp. Thank God his woman had good taste in clothes. He looked at her bent over in a pink halter top and white capris and made sure his expression stayed neutral. It wouldn’t gain him any points if her sisters saw him ogling her.
“Okay, start telling me what needs to be put onto the truck,” he ordered.
“I’ve got this lamp,” Zoe said.
“And this mirror,” Chloe pointed to something buried in bubble wrap. At least Evie’s bosses had done a good job packing her stuff.
Aiden assessed the contents of the locker. Most of the furniture would fit in the truck if it was packed correctly.
“Girls, who’s going to help you unload the
truck?”
“Clive and Henry and a couple of other guys. We’re buying them pizza.”
“Who’s Henry?” Maddie asked.
“He’s Clive’s brother. Zoe likes him better, but he doesn’t even know she exists. It’s complicated,” Chloe explained.
“Zoe, don’t get pushed into going out with Clive if you don’t want to,” Maddie said worriedly. “Do you want me to come up to ETSU with you?”
Aiden smiled. He was really beginning to like Maddie. She had a lot of Evie’s protective instincts.
“I don’t want you driving that truck back to the university with it loaded up. It’ll be too unwieldy,” Aiden said. “I’ll drive it, and the three of you can follow in the rental car and have time to catch up with one another. When we get there, I can introduce myself to Clive and Henry.”
“Thanks, Handsome! That’s a great idea,” Evie said enthusiastically.
“Are you going to go all Drake on them?” Zoe asked suspiciously.
“He’s worse than Drake,” Evie said. “He goes all icy. If they’re assholes, he’ll freeze them into the ground. They’ll run for the hills. This Clive guy sounds like he could be an asshole.”
“Nah,” Zoe started.
“He definitely has asshole tendencies,” Chloe said.
“His truck shouts asshole,” Maddie concurred. “There is now an asshole free zone for Avery girls, are we clear Zoe?”
“He’s really hot,” Zoe wheedled. “And anyway, it’s just one date.”
“There’s a nutsack hanging from the trailer hitch,” Evie said with exasperation.
“Okay, we’ll let Aiden talk to him. If he can’t look him in the eye, I won’t go out on the date.”
“Deal,” Evie said.
***
“The twins are a riot,” Aiden said as he got into bed beside Evie at the hotel.
She smiled. It was true, the twins were a handful, they always had been.
“What did you think of Maddie?”
“She took me by surprise.” Aiden pushed one of his pillows over to her so she could sleep more comfortably.
“How did she surprise you?”
“Come closer, and I’ll tell you.”
Snuggling up to Aiden was no hardship. She breathed in his scent and smiled. “Spill it.”
“She wanted to make sure I wouldn’t hurt you again.”
That had her head jerking up. She knew Maddie would be concerned, but actually confronting Aiden would have been tough for her.
“What did she say?”
“She told me how special you are, and she wanted my promise that I would take care of you. You hold a special place in her heart.”
“So you got to see what she is really like? You could see that she is really rare.”
“Yes, Kitten, Maddie is just as wonderful as you told me.” He traced her jaw with his fingertips. “You hit the sister jackpot.”
“I did, didn’t I?” She grinned. Then her voice lowered. “Do you want to know something else?”
“Sure.”
“My boyfriend doesn’t have stripper mud flaps on his SUV, so I hit the jackpot there, too.”
“Really?” he whispered. “Then I think you should reward him.”
“Do you have an idea of what he might like?”
Aiden bent down and whispered in her ear.
Chapter Nineteen
Aiden was smiling a week later when he heard from Dex that the sale of the hotel had finally gone through. It had taken longer than he’d wanted, but still, it had happened. The police hadn’t found the person responsible for the break-in, and neither had the private detective that Aiden had hired.
“Do you want him to continue to look?” Dex asked.
Aiden thought about it. “Does he have any leads?”
“He’s chasing down a lead on the C-4 that was used to open up the safe.”
“Okay, then have him continue,” Aiden answered. “Thanks, Dex.”
“I’m not done. Lydia did a great job with clearing up the picture of the English- speaking dude in Turkey. We handed that to Interpol. They’re putting him through their databases as we speak.”
That was great news. “Thanks again. I’ll call Lydia.”
“So when are you coming back to the good SEAL team? Now that you’ve got a woman, is there really any reason for you to stay with Midnight Delta?”
Aiden barked out a laugh. “Do the men really talk about Midnight Delta like that?”
“Fuck yeah. It’s all over base that your motto isn’t ‘The Only Easy Day is Yesterday’.”
“Okay, I’ll bite, what’s Midnight Delta’s motto?”
“’Happily Ever After is Possible.’”
“Fuck me,” Aiden groaned. “Mason hasn’t heard that, has he?”
“I think somebody is having a banner made that they plan to put on Drake’s truck.”
“Holy Hell. Please, Dex, you’ve got to tell me when they’re going to do that. I have to be there.”
Then something clicked. “Goddammit. This is all your damned idea, isn’t it?”
Dexter Evans was silent.
“Seriously, Aiden, when are you coming back to Black Dawn? Gray said it was only three missions.”
“One more, then I’m coming back.”
“Okay, if not, then the banner is going on your SUV.”
Aiden grinned. He missed his team. “As soon as I come back to Black Dawn, you’re going to need to begin your rotation onto Midnight Delta. I think you need a love life.”
“Bite your tongue.”
Aiden laughed.
***
Evie was poring over paperwork from local community colleges. She wanted to start there, and then eventually transfer credits to a university. Aiden took that time to return Rylie’s call.
“Huey and the former sheriff are going to be transferred to Angola.”
It took a moment for Aiden to catch onto what Rylie was saying. “That’s Louisiana’s prison. They won’t take them, all of their offenses were in Tennessee.”
“There have been changes in their records. They’ll both be transferred next week.”
Aiden thought about what he knew about that prison. Hell, it was known as the Alcatraz of the South. It was one of the worst prisons in the US. For a split second he was happy, but then he thought about the reason that Rylie would have gone to such lengths.
“What did you find?” he asked hoarsely.
“It’s gone. In a couple of cases I was able to backtrack the content on the websites to peoples’ personal computers. We have the feds on their asses.”
“We?”
Rylie sighed. “Most of this I was able to handle on my own. Anything that dealt with Evie’s pictures was just me,” she rushed to assure him.
Aiden waited.
“But when I wanted to trace back to these fucker’s computers I needed help. I grabbed a friend. He’s solid. He just knew that we were dealing with some underage pornography. We’d worked sex trafficking in the past, he doesn’t know that this is a personal case.”
Aiden rolled that information around in his head. He liked it, and so would Evie. It meant that more people would be prosecuted.
“And the web-crawler software?”
“I’ve got it set up.”
Aiden nodded.
“Thanks, Rylie.” Then he asked a question he’d been wrestling with. “Do you think Evie would be comfortable knowing it was you who worked on this?”
“You tell her it’s me. We’ve met the one time when she was in the hospital, and another time over at Drake and Karen’s apartment. She and I’ll have drinks some time and we’ll have a heart to heart. We’re part of a sisterhood that goes deep. It’s all good.”
Aiden couldn’t believe how lucky he’d gotten when he’d signed on with Midnight Delta. Not just finding Evie, but the men he worked with and their women. All of them were extremely special.
***
Aiden walked into his office, and saw Evie w
ith her long hair in a high ponytail. He wondered if she had worn it like that when she was sixteen.
“Kitten, do you have a minute?”
“Sure, what’s up?” She set down her pen and smiled up at him.
He tipped his head, “why don’t we go out to the deck.”
“Okay.”
While they watched the setting sun, he told her what he had done. Finally he asked her if she had any questions.
“Angola? Wasn’t that the prison from ‘Dead Man Walking?’” she asked, referring to a movie they had watched together.
Aiden nodded.
“It looked really bad,” she breathed. “Rylie must have been pissed at what she’d found.”
“She was.”
“She seems so nice, but Drake talked about her once. He said she was a ball-buster. She went after an entire human trafficking ring all on her own.”
Aiden had heard the story. Darius Stanton was extremely laid-back, except when someone brought up his fiancée’s antics, then all bets were off.
“I heard about that, too.”
Evie’s fingers twisted with his. “What is it, Kitten?”
“If she was mad enough to have Huey and the sheriff transferred from Tennessee to Louisiana, then it must have been a lot worse then I remembered. The pictures I mean.” She had squeezed her fingers so tight that they were bloodless.
“Honey, she didn’t say anything about that. She has a younger sister who’s about the same age as you were when the pictures were taken.”
“Oh, yeah.” She released his hand. “I forgot.”
He pulled the scrunchie holding her hair, and ran his fingers through the dark mass, massaging her scalp.
“That feels good,” her voice was thick.
“I’m glad.”
“Not the massage. It feels good knowing that this is finally behind me,” her voice shook.
“I know, Kitten.”
“Thank you for calling Rylie. I’ve got to call and thank her.”
“She said something about you two going out for drinks.”
“I’d like that.”
She twisted in his hold so she could stare up at him. “You continue to be my hero.”
***
Evie was happy to see Maddie’s number pop up on her phone. She could always use a break from housework.
Her Relentless SEAL (Midnight Delta Book 10) Page 15