“I am,” Jax interrupted, earning a glare from Nico.
Nico made sure it was a badass glare, too. One that would hopefully keep him quiet until they got to the bottom of this.
“Anyway,” Piper went on. “Davy talked me into meeting Jax. I said I’d give him five minutes, that’s all,” she quickly added. “So, Davy picked me up near the cabin.”
Eden no doubt heard the “near” just as well as Nico had because it caused them both to groan. “You sneaked out and didn’t tell your aunt Rayelle that you were meeting with Jax,” Nico concluded.
Piper confirmed that with a nod, and her teary gaze shifted to Jax. “I just wanted to tell you...some things.”
Things that probably weren’t what a brother wanted to hear, and that might have been why Piper left his arms and went to Eden. Piper hugged her. “Thank you for coming. I’m sorry about all of this.”
“It’s okay.” No glare from Eden. Just a whole boatload of sympathy, and she wiped a fresh tear from Piper’s face. “Are you all right?”
This time Piper’s nod didn’t confirm anything other than she didn’t want to worry them more than they already were. Since Eden was giving Piper the TLC that she obviously needed, Nico shifted his attention back to Kace.
“You arrested this Davy guy?” Nico asked.
“Had to. He was speeding through town, and when I pulled him over and ran his license, it was fake. He’s nineteen, but according to his license, he’s twenty-one.”
Jax didn’t groan, which meant he knew about the fake ID. Nico would deal with that in a moment.
“Had Davy been drinking?” Nico added to Kace.
Kace shook his head. That was the first piece of good news Nico had heard in this mess, but he still reeled around to Jax. “You sent a guy with a fake ID and a penchant for speeding to pick up Piper. Explain to me why I shouldn’t beat the shit out of you for that.”
Jax swallowed hard. “Because I didn’t know Davy would speed.” He didn’t say that with much confidence, almost as if it had a question mark at the end of it.
“Don’t blame Jax for this,” Piper said, easing away from Eden. “I sneaked out, I got in that truck and even though I told Davy to slow down, it was too late. I saw the blue lights from the cruiser.”
Unlike Jax, there was no questioning tone in her response. But there was plenty of fatigue and worry. Nico got that. Piper was going to have to face Rayelle.
“Where does Rayelle think you are right now?” Nico asked her.
“Out for a walk. But she’s texted me three times already so I know she’s worried.” And judging from the way Piper was chewing on her bottom lip, she was very concerned as to how Rayelle would deal with that worrying.
“I’ll take you back to the cabin,” Nico insisted. “Just give me a second.”
Nico stepped away from Piper, going to Eden, and since there was no chance they’d have privacy in Kace’s office, he took her into the squad room, where at the moment there were no deputies. He was especially glad that the busybody receptionist/dispatcher, Ginger Monroe, had already gone home for the day. However, there would still be prying eyes since Kace’s office had a window facing the squad room, and besides, the door was still open.
“I’m sorry, but I’ll have to cut this evening short. You should go on home.” Nico kept his voice as low as possible.
“I completely understand. You want me to go with you to take Piper back to the cabin?”
Nico considered it, only because an audience might make Rayelle soften the snit she was going to have, but then again, Rayelle seemed to have only one tone when it came to her attitude.
“It’s okay. I might be there awhile,” he told Eden, and that brought him to his next point. One that he really hated to make. “I have to leave on a business trip first thing in the morning—”
“I understand,” she repeated. “Just go and take care of Piper. My car is here so I can drive home.”
Eden had insisted on following Jax and him into town since there wouldn’t have been enough room in his truck for Jax, Piper, Nico and her. That had turned out to be a good thing because now he wouldn’t have to worry about Eden getting home.
“I’ll see you when you get back from your business trip,” she said. “Won’t I?”
He hated that she even thought she needed to add that last part, but then Eden and he were new at this. “Oh yeah. You’ll definitely see me.”
Nico wanted to kiss her. Not only to reassure her that he’d keep his promise, but he seriously just wanted his mouth on hers. However, when he glanced over his shoulder, he saw that Piper, Kace and Jax were all staring at them. Instead, Nico settled for a quick brush of his lips over her cheek. It was the kind of kiss he’d given Eden dozens of times over the years.
This one went straight to his groin.
Definitely not a good place for a kiss to go because of that whole audience thing. Plus, he wasn’t sure if Eden wanted to keep what was happening between them a secret. She was the one whose reputation would be hurt by this. Gossips would say she was playing around with a guy who played around for sport and that she was probably doing it because she was on the rebound. Nico knew she’d hate the sympathetic looks and the disapproving ones from her folks.
Plus, there was the Rayelle factor. Rayelle didn’t want Nico involved with a woman, any woman, since she’d gotten it in her head that it would be a negative influence on Piper. And Eden could get caught up in Rayelle’s attempts to make sure that Nico didn’t have a sex life while Piper and she were still in Coldwater.
“I’ll see you in three days,” Nico added, and because he couldn’t stop himself, he gave her another of those cheek kisses before she headed out of the building and Nico went back into Kace’s office.
Where everyone was still staring at him.
“Ready to go?” Nico asked Piper.
“Can I talk to her first?” Jax blurted out.
Nico would have nixed that idea, but Piper quickly nodded, along with taking a deep breath. Then, as Eden and he had done, Piper and Jax stepped out into the squad room.
“Shit,” Kace immediately grumbled, “you’re sleeping with Eden.”
“No.” Nico could honestly say there’d been no sleeping whatsoever going on. Heck, not any full-blown sex, either, which was probably why he felt ready to explode. Maybe his hard-on would fully soften in an hour or two.
Nico could tell there were things Kace wanted to say. In fact, Nico figured he’d hear a lecture or two in the next couple of minutes so he got some “business” out of the way first.
“What will happen to Davy?” Nico asked.
Kace gave him a look that only a cop could manage. A cop who apparently didn’t like putting “business” before a sibling lecture. “Well, you’re not going to kick the shit out of him, that’s for sure. He’s a stupid kid who made a mistake. I’ve called his parents, and they’re on the way here now. They can take Jax back, too, since they’re neighbors.”
Good. No way did Nico want to have to drive Jax home, but then it wasn’t good for the kid to be lingering around, either. Especially since Jax clearly wanted to do that lingering with Piper. At least they weren’t kissing or anything, and Piper had her arms folded over her chest, giving lover boy a dose of some very good defensive posture.
“If you’re not sleeping with Eden,” Kace grumbled, “you’re thinking about doing it.” He added a disapproving huff to go along with that. “Look—you don’t have to nail every available woman in town.”
Normally, Nico would have just flashed a cocky smile and joked to his big brother that he did indeed need to do that. But joking about Eden didn’t seem right. She was his friend, and no, it didn’t matter that he’d had his hand in her panties or had intimate knowledge of her waxing habits. She was, first and foremost, his friend. Heck, maybe that’s why the near sex had been so good with
her. They hadn’t held much back.
“I hope you’re at least having second thoughts about screwing around with her,” Kace went on.
Nico nodded. Except he had moved on to third and fourth thoughts. And it still hadn’t changed his mind. He wanted to be with her. Despite his bad track record. Despite their friendship. Despite his not being honest with her about Damien’s cheating. He still wanted Eden.
“I’ll be careful with her,” Nico told his brother.
Kace gave him “the” look. The one that mixed together big brother, cop and chief bullshit detector.
“You’d better be. Buck and Rosy think the world of Eden. So do I. If you bang her and discard her, expect grudges to be held.” Kace got right in his face to finish up the lecture. “Big-assed grudges. Think before you leap, little brother.” Kace’s index finger landed against Nico’s chest. “For once in your life, think.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
EDEN SIPPED HER WINE, listened to the chatter of the women at their girls’ night, and she realized one important thing.
She’d had way too much thinking time.
Two days of it with Nico gone on his business trip. She’d believed that the time away from him would give her perspective, that it would make her wonder if she should cool things down a bit and reevaluate what she wanted. But that hadn’t happened.
No cooling. No reevaluating. Just the dull throbbing ache in her body. Especially the part contained in her panty region.
Even a refresh of her Brazilian hadn’t stopped her from thinking about sex, and while her repeat treatments hadn’t been nearly as uncomfortable as her first one, the temporary sting hadn’t done a thing to dampen her libido. Man-specific libido, that is. Her hots were all for Nico.
She suspected Nico was dealing with the hots for her, as well.
Of course, Eden had nudged that heat about an hour earlier by texting him a part of a blog letter that she’d be answering soon.
Dear Naughty Cowgirl, help! My latest man isn’t packing a lot of heat, if you get my drift. Any suggestions on how to deal with only four inches?
Getting Less than Usual in Laredo
Rosy’s hoot and applause drew Eden’s attention away from her thoughts of Nico, sex and the blog and back to the kitchen table at the McCall house. That’s where Rosy had just put in the last of a 500-piece jigsaw “Puppies Galore” puzzle that Piper, Rayelle and she had been working on.
Shelby was near the puzzlers and was adding more cubes of cheese to the fondue pot on the kitchen counter. Cleo was at the blender, mixing up some virgin margaritas—a follow-up to the virgin daiquiris she’d made earlier.
In the adjoining family room, Beauty and the Beast was playing on the DVD though no one was watching it. Just as they hadn’t watched The Little Mermaid before that, and next up would be Shrek if the night lasted that long.
Rayelle was the reason for this G-rated merriment since she’d been the one in charge of movie selection. A much-different atmosphere from rating Christian Grey’s ass and using the pause button to see if they could get a glimpse of his junk. That’s what they’d done during their last girls’ night anyway.
Eden’s phone dinged with a message from Nico, and since she still had some semiprivacy in the family room, she looked at his response.
Nico texted:
Dear, Getting Less Than Usual in Laredo, size doesn’t matter. Just teach him to hit the right spot, and you won’t miss those extra inches at all.
Smiling probably more than she should, Eden texted back:
Usually guys with small equipment say that. You definitely aren’t small.
He answered:
You’ve never seen my equipment. Want me to send you a dirty picture of it?
Oh yes. Suddenly, she wanted that a whole lot even if it worked her up into a heated lather that Nico couldn’t cool down. Sure, she said, thankful that a text couldn’t detect the way she’d gone all soft and damp.
The moments seemed to crawl by before her phone dinged again. On the screen, there was a cartoon snowman couple, and the female was giving a blowjob to a very short snow penis. The caption was “Sorry, honey, but it keeps melting whenever I put my mouth on it.”
Eden laughed before she could stop herself, and it wasn’t a soft chuckle, either. It was a good belly laugh, and she quickly put away her phone after she texted Nico a very short reply.
Will have to test this on you, she said, hoping that he was now as needy as she was.
Piper pushed herself away from the table, and as she’d done most of the night, she also checked her phone. Maybe for a message or the time. To her, time had probably stood still. No way could this be fun for a sixteen-year-old.
“The bathroom,” Piper muttered, heading in that direction.
Eden watched her as she walked away. Piper had smiled on and off throughout the night, but on a fake scale of one to ten, the smiles were a ten. She was down. Way down. Maybe because of Jax, the recent alarm with her late period or Rayelle’s reaction to Davy’s arrest. Either way, Eden needed to talk to the girl, and she hoped she could get her alone for a few minutes.
Of course, Nico had filled Eden in on what’d happened after he’d taken Piper from the police station back to the cabin. Piper and he had fessed up to Rayelle, and Nico had thankfully managed to calm Rayelle down by reminding her that at least Piper hadn’t been with Jax. Piper had apologized and groveled, swearing never to take a ride with a friend again unless Rayelle knew about it. It had been a Band-Aid fix, and Eden wanted to make sure that Rayelle wasn’t still simmering over it enough to make Piper miserable.
“Oh, I nearly forgot,” Shelby said, hurrying into the family room with Eden. Shelby hauled out a thick photo album from beneath the coffee table. “Dad was poking around in the attic last week, and he came up with this.”
Shelby dropped down on her knees, flipping through the plastic-covered pages that held lots of old photographs, most of them yellowed with age. She stopped when she got to one page and handed off the album to Eden.
“Remember that?” Shelby asked.
Eden set her wine aside, had a look and smiled. It was a group shot of Nico, his brothers, Shelby, Cleo and Eden.
“I think Nico must have been about fourteen when it was taken,” Shelby said.
“No, he was thirteen,” Cleo corrected as she joined them. So did Rosy and Rayelle. “I know that because Judd and I were both sixteen then. It was, uh, a memorable year for us.”
The year they’d no doubt first had sex. Eden wasn’t the only one who picked up on that “memorable” though, because Rosy laughed. However, Rayelle got that constipated look on her face, making Eden wonder if the woman had had anything close to “memorable.”
“That would have been two years after Nico and his brothers came here,” Rosy contributed just as Piper came back into the room. “And about two and a half years before he left Brenda’s.”
The silence came as it always did when there was any mention of Nico leaving Brenda’s. That’s because those months in between Brenda’s and the ranch had been nothing short of hell. His brothers and he had been beaten and Nico had nearly been killed. Despite that, Nico didn’t seem to carry the darkness that his brothers did. But it had taken its toll. Eden knew that. Knew, too, that Nico didn’t think of himself as a good man, and she suspected that had its unholy roots in those months of abuse.
“So, you were with Judd even then?” Piper asked Cleo. She pointed to the possessive way that Judd had his arm slung around Cleo’s shoulders.
“We were a couple,” Cleo confirmed. “But then I moved to another foster home, and we lost touch.”
“And were you and Callen also together?” Piper asked Shelby. In the picture, Callen was behind the others, looking both impatient and disinterested. The exact opposite of Shelby, who was grinning at him.
“Definitely not,
” Shelby assured her. “My dad took in a lot of fosters when I was growing up, and he had one rule. If any of the boys touched me, he would castrate them. You’d be surprised just how effective the threat of castration can be.”
That caused Rosy to hoot with laughter, and there were giggles. From everyone except Rayelle, who seemed more the sort to threaten castration rather than to be hindered or amused by it.
“You and Nico weren’t together, either,” Piper said, looking at the image of Eden as a thirteen-year-old girl. Damien wasn’t in the picture because he was the one behind the camera, and in the shot, Nico did indeed have his arm around Eden. But there was no gleam in his eyes like in Judd’s and Cleo’s.
“No. We were friends,” Eden answered. “Best friends.” Looking back though, that’s the year things had started to change. Nico had started to notice girls, and they’d started to notice him. “Damien and I were already sort of a couple by then.”
“Oh,” Piper said, and another long, awkward silence followed.
“It’s okay,” Eden assured her. Piper had enough baggage without trying to walk on eggshells around her. “Damien and I were together for a long time. I can’t exactly do an exorcism or castration to cut him out of my memories.”
“Too bad about that, huh?” Shelby said. “Still, I gotta say when I was growing up, I looked at you two and thought—I want that. A guy who’s devoted to me. One who sticks.” She shrugged. “But I think Damien and you just had all of that too soon and too young. And it fizzled out.”
Eden gave her a nod of agreement and sipped more of her wine. Was that it? Was that the reason Damien had cheated on her and then left her for Mimi? Maybe. But if so Eden vowed not to let that muddle her up as Nico’s childhood had done to his brothers. It might sound like a corny affirmation session, but she was okay. Nico was okay. And they could be okay together even if it ended up being just an affair. She certainly wasn’t going to think about that now because it would stop her from enjoying every second she had as his flavor of the week.
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