Bound For You: Men in Blue, Book 6

by Jayne Rylon

  “Hey Shar, you look great. It’s going to be fine.” Ryan smiled at her. “I promise no one’s going to deck anybody in front of the children. Or in the presence of a half dozen cops. They don’t appreciate extra paperwork on their day off.”

  Though that hadn’t been a contributing factor to her anxiety, she added it to the list, which grew longer by the second.

  What if Ben manned up and went after Ryan?

  What if Ryan changed his mind and stayed with Ben?

  What if being around their friends—family, really—made Ryan realize he wasn’t alone even without his ex-roomie and didn’t need her after all?

  What if seeing or talking with Lily reminded Ryan that Shari had no experience with his kinks and he needed more than she could give?

  What if they reverted to platonic interactions but never completely doused the embers smoldering between them?

  Finally, Shari understood what a special hell it must have been for Jambrea and John all those years. Wanting something you knew could never happen yet unable to give up on it anyway. Being doomed to that kind of unrealized potential could break her.

  “We don’t have to do this. I can run the cake inside, see Julie quick, and keep my promise. Then you and I can drive away back to your place, where it’s just us.” He sighed, then stared straight into her eyes with that striking gaze of his. “I know things are new, still forming, I won’t risk—”

  That was all she needed to hear. Selfish she wasn’t.

  Besides, Julie was more important. The innocent girl didn’t deserve another disappointment.

  “It’s fine. I’m being ridiculous.” She shook her head and opened her door, sliding to the curb before Ryan could round the hood to lower her to the ground like he had when they’d stopped for gas.

  He might have argued, or tried to reassure her again, if a shout hadn’t cut through the cool noontime air followed by the bang of the screen door on the front entrance. “Uncle Ryan! Aunt Shari! You’re here!”

  Julie bolted down the sidewalk and plowed into Ryan’s legs so hard he stumbled backward a step before crouching down to smother her in an embrace warm enough to counteract Julie’s lack of a jacket. Shari could say that from experience now.

  “You really came.” Julie sniffled, threatening Shari’s composure.

  “I promised, didn’t I?” Ryan finger combed the girl’s hair.

  “You pinky swore. I was going to be really mad if you broke it, too.” She hugged him again before squirming free and bounding over to Shari to repeat the enthusiastic greeting.

  “Why don’t you two ladies head inside? I’ll be right in. I don’t want to ruin the surprise.” Ryan winked at Julie when he spied Ben lingering in the doorway.

  “Yeah, let’s go upstairs, Aunt Shari. Everyone came to my party. At first I was sad, but it’s better than I thought because it happened early. Like when you wish it was Christmas tomorrow but it takes forever to really be the right day. Except then it was here faster. My friend Hannah and some other kids from my class went roller-skating with me, only one girl fell and had to get a Band-Aid, and now all my aunts and uncles are here. Baby Ezra too…”

  She kept rambling as she skipped across the porch, past Ben and up the stairs.

  “Hi,” Shari murmured as she turned sideways to pass him without brushing up against him.

  “Hi.” He shocked her when he snagged her upper arm in a single fist as she passed, swinging her around. “Thanks again for yesterday.”

  If she had been surprised by his voluntary contact, it made her feel like she’d stumbled into the Twilight Zone when he leaned in and kissed her, soft and quick, on the cheek before releasing her and heading outside as if nothing extraordinary had occurred.

  Shari stood there, frozen, long enough to see Ben approach Ryan. No kisses there. Stiff posture, hands jammed in his jeans pockets, Ben kept his distance. Ryan, too, seemed formal and cold compared to his usual self. It should have reassured her.

  Instead she felt her lower lip wobble.

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this between them.

  “Aunt Shariiiiiiiiiiiiii! Come see my new teddy bear.”

  She jumped nearly as high as a startled barn cat. “Sorry. I’m coming.”

  Shari jogged up the stairs and into the apartment that had been so full of bitterness and frustration the day before. Laughter and joking conversations replaced the shouting from her memories. She hoped Julie could say the same.

  “Well, look who it is.” Mason folded his massive arms, his eyes narrowed.

  His foul mood didn’t last when she strode to him and put her arms around his waist. “Thank you for your concern. I’m sorry I freaked you out. All of you.”

  “Our women—and some of the guys around here, too—have a habit of attracting trouble. After the shit we’ve seen, we tend to rush to worst-case scenarios.” He ruffled her hair as if she was also eight years old. Nine, she corrected herself.

  She didn’t mind. Since her brother had died, and for years before, she’d missed that protective presence in her life. Sure, it could be overbearing at times, but mostly it felt nice that someone gave a damn.

  “Whatever.” Lacey rolled her eyes at her big, handsome husband from the lap of her other equally handsome husband, Tyler. “You’ve always been like this to some degree. Our…mishaps…have only made you worse.”

  “She has a point.” Ty earned a smooch as a reward for taking Lacey’s side, though every member of their group could attest that he was as hyper-vigilant as Mason when it came to guarding their own. They’d lost enough to know they didn’t want to go through that agony again. Rob, Lacey’s brother, had been killed in the line of duty. Razor had barely escaped the same fate. Ben’s sister, destroyed in the Sex Offender scandal. JRad and Lily had lost lovers before finding each other. Izzy, a husband and her father to the same drug. Shari’s own brother, John. The list went on…

  Each of them was committed to keeping their group whole, safe, and happy.

  The exchange might have deteriorated into some sort of testosterone display if a much smaller version of the guys hadn’t interrupted. Men in Blue 2.0, Baby Ezra, who already looked so much like his daddy, Razor, he was sure to break hearts by the time he reached preschool.

  He toddled into the living room and across the floor to Shari with uneven yet determined stomps of his adorable, socked baby feet. When he reached her, he put his arms up and she obliged, lifting him high in the air until he giggled. “Hey, little guy. I swear you’ve grown since I saw you last.”

  Izzy, his mom, followed close behind, zooming in for a hug of her own.

  It sometimes seemed impossible that someone as petite and youthful as her could have a baby of her own. Shari tried not to let that make her feel like she’d passed her prime, isolated and lonely out in the boonies. Secretly, it kind of did, though.

  Thank God her friends were kind enough, and wise enough, not to ask too many questions when she didn’t have answers herself. Not yet. It was too soon to know what exactly was happening between her and Ryan. She didn’t intend to jinx it by getting ahead of herself.

  Jambrea provided the perfect distraction when she waddled into the living room, with an almost identical gait to Ezra’s. Clint had his arm slung deceptively casually around her waist while Matt followed a step behind, surely prepared to catch her should she stumble.

  “Are you sure there are only two kids in there, Jambs?” Razor asked when he saw her. “Even when Izzy was about to pop she didn’t seem so…huge.”

  JRad smacked the rookie—although he’d long outgrown the official title, they still referred to him that way when he acted like one—upside the head.

  “Not in a bad way!” He tried to extract his foot from his mouth. “I mean, the more the merrier, right? And look at the size of Matt. His kid will probably start out as big as a kindergartener.”

  “Quit while you’re ahead. Well, less behind,” Lily ordered, shaking her head.

  Jambrea, how
ever, only laughed. The earthy sound had always been one of her best traits. Then she went textbook nurse on his ass. “Yes. I’m having fraternal twins. The stuff I had to have done last week included some DNA testing. Guess what? I’m a freak of nature thanks to these two fine men!”

  Her gleaming grin erased any negative connotations the term carried.

  “What did we miss?” Ryan asked as he came through the door, carrying the amazing cake he’d baked as if it were as precious as a newborn itself. The containers he’d boxed it in kept it hidden, for the moment. Ben followed close behind, lugging the rest of the stuff Ryan needed to assemble and serve his masterpiece.

  Ellie, with concern etched into her features, got up and went to help her brother. No doubt to poke and pry a little about what was going on and how he was handling the changes since yesterday.

  “I was about to teach Razor about heteropaternal superfecundation.”

  “That’s my favorite song in Mary Poppins!” Julie bounced and clapped, making everyone burst out laughing.

  Shari lowered Ezra to the ground when he realized his bestie had arrived. He sped off toward Julie, who abandoned the grownups in favor of showing Ezra her new toys. Mostly he banged things together or tried to eat them.

  Yep, definitely Razor’s son.

  “So what is that thing you said?” Ellie wondered as she returned to the living room, satisfied for now with whatever reassurance Ryan must have given her. She snuggled against Lucas, who had his feet—both the traditional fleshy variety and the super-spy tattoo-style decorated artificial model—propped up on the coffee table.

  “The simple version? Two eggs. Two swimmers. Two different dads. Fraternal twins.” Jambrea rubbed her belly, which truly was enormous, as pride and joy radiated from her as well as her pair of men. “I’m having one of each of their children. At the same time.”

  Holy shit.

  Was that actually possible?

  She would know. After all, she was a medical professional.

  For a moment, Shari’s overactive imagination substituted herself for Jambrea. Her gaze winged to Ryan’s, then to Ben’s. Both guys were staring at her in return. If looks could impregnate, she was pretty sure she would have just been hetero-fecund-whatevered right there in the middle of the living room floor.

  Which only reminded her of Ryan’s fantasy from the night before. It seemed like a lifetime ago because she’d hardly slept in the past thirty-six hours. It had been one hell of a day and a half.

  What the hell had the guys said to each other out there?

  Why were they both still looking at her like that?

  Their laser beam stares were broken when the rest of their friends swarmed Jambrea, Matt, and Clint to offer them congratulations and share their excitement. While Ryan went off to the kitchen to do his thing, she settled on a stool at the bar where she could watch him without being too obvious, she hoped.

  After ten minutes or so of listening to the chatter surrounding her, sliding into the contentment she usually experienced around her friends, a huge yawn snuck past her guard.

  Ryan’s head whipped around. “You’re not driving home tonight.”

  “You didn’t get any sleep either,” she fired back.

  “Boys and girls, there are children present,” Razor faux-chided with a smirk.

  “Ha ha, very funny.” She blushed despite her brush off. If Ben hadn’t called with his update, they probably would have done exactly what Razor implied.

  “Maybe you two should stay in town tonight,” Mason suggested. “We don’t need another false alarm, or worse, a real one.”

  “Your room is still yours if you want it.” Ben spoke a line straight out of her nightmares.

  She shook her head and said, “No!”

  Maybe a little too loud, or a little too emphatically, because everyone swiveled to look at her.

  “Guys, she’s got a business to run.” JRad tried to rescue her. “If you need to get back to your guests, Shari, I don’t mind giving you a ride home tonight. If you have a vacant cabin, maybe Lily and I could make an overnight out of it.”

  “Oh.” The stain on Shari’s cheeks darkened. She pressed her fingers to the flaming sections of her face. “Actually, there’s no one booked right now.”

  “Isn’t this peak season with the fall foliage and the holidays coming up?” Ben asked, frowning.

  “Should be.” She wilted.

  “Huh?” Ryan tilted his head. “I should have realized…”

  “You were too busy, pal. We got that by now.” This time it was Clint who ribbed him.

  “No, seriously. What’s up with that, Shari?” Ben again. His brow wrinkled.

  She wished she didn’t have to admit how fucked up things had gotten, but she wasn’t about to lie to him. Or any of their friends. “Uh, you know that new manager I hired a few months ago?”

  Everyone nodded.

  “I fired him.” She slouched so much her spine hit the edge of the countertop. “But not before he wiped out the registration system, which sent a jacked up form letter—an automatic cancellation notice, the system default—to everyone who’d put down a deposit. He didn’t mention it either. Until it became obvious no one had checked in for about a week. I lost all my bookings. I don’t blame people for being pissed when I reached out to them trying to figure out the situation. A screw up of that magnitude certainly wouldn’t instill confidence in me as a guest. So, yeah, most of them declined to rebook. Some others had already made alternate arrangements by the time I contacted them, and so…I decided I needed a vacation.”

  “Wow, that sucks.” Lacey reached over to hold her hand.

  “Why didn’t you tell us before?” Ryan asked.

  If they hadn’t been interrupted last night maybe she would have mentioned it. Or maybe they would have kept giving each other stellar orgasms until they passed out and she had no functioning brain cells left to stress about it.

  Either worked for her.

  “Probably because I feel like a moron.” She shrugged. “After the last four managers who haven’t worked out, I somehow brought the worst of them yet onboard. I just need to learn this stuff myself, I guess. I thought while I was getting things off the ground it would be beneficial to have someone with experience around who could train me. You know, teach me some growth strategies, make smart decisions about where to spend my marketing budget, or share insights about what they’d seen work other places. But it seems like none of the qualified candidates are interested in living on the top of a mountain for a base salary. I’m obviously doing more harm than good at this point.”

  “I can help,” Ben offered. “I might not work in the hospitality industry, but I do a lot of similar stuff at my job.”

  He was some sort of management analyst, though she’d never fully understood what that meant. When she’d asked, he’d always waved it off as dull. A way to make a living by putting money in the company coffers.

  “I can at least get you back up and running until you find someone permanent. I wouldn’t mind interviewing the next batch of applicants for you to make sure they’re not full of shit,” Ben kept going, making it awfully hard to say no.

  “While he’s working that end of things, I’ll take a look at the reservations system.” For JRad, their resident computer whiz, it would be child’s play. “It shouldn’t be possible to do something like that accidentally. I’ll make sure it never happens again and maybe tweak the software to customize the program for any other functions Ben thinks you could use.”

  “Thank you.” She rubbed her temples, still unsure if that would be enough to rescue her from the enormous hole her latest “help” had dug. “Then maybe you guys could be my guests for the holidays and leave honest reviews on the popular travel sites. No matter what you think, they would have to be better than the one-stars floating to the top at each website.”

  She nibbled on her lip, trying not to get overwhelmed. What if she couldn’t turn things around? Then what would she do?
Where would she go?

  “Shar, you shouldn’t have kept this to yourself.” Ryan crossed to her side and hugged her tight. “I hope that guy who fucked you over moved out of state, or I might have to pay him a visit.”

  “Yep. He’s long gone. By I fired him, I mostly mean he abandoned ship when he realized it was going down.” The freedom to accept Ryan’s comfort, and feel like she deserved it, made everything better. She leaned on his shoulder. “I just need to get my shit together, patch up the damage, and reopen after the holidays under new management. Also known as me, myself, and I.”

  “It’s too much for one person to handle, isn’t it?” Lucas asked.

  “You provide meals, take care of the animals, clean the cabins, handle the bookings…” Ryan grew stiff beneath her hands, and not in a good way. “That’s crazy. You’re one person, not a hotel staff.”

  They both knew that if she took on too much, she’d never have time to make the drive all the way into the city to see him, never mind leaving her guests alone while she made a not-so-quick booty call.

  Maybe more than Camp David was doomed.

  Fuck.

  “Uncle Ryan, do I get to blow out the candles and make a wish yet?” Julie squished between them and yanked on his hand.

  “Soon.” He smiled down at her before looking back to Shari. “We’re not done talking about this.”

  Shari nodded. She had to figure it out anyway. Procrastinating on developing solutions hadn’t done her much good. Having a sounding board for her problems was another luxury she hadn’t been able to afford in the past. “Okay. Go ahead, now. Let’s dig in to your creation. I might be biased, but I think it’s the best birthday cake in the history of all birthday cakes.”

  Julie clapped and danced in place. “My cake is awesome, my cake is awesome.”

  “You haven’t even seen it yet.” Ryan chuckled as he picked her up and carried her into the main section of the kitchen.

  “It’s the best because you made it for me, Uncle Ryan. Duh.” She patted his cheek with her small hand.

  As everyone gathered around for the big reveal, Ben and Ryan’s attention temporarily diverted, Lily approached.