WAKE & DUTCH

Nobody Cares Unless You’re Pretty

By Lani Lynn Vale ™

Text copyright © 2022 Lani Lynn Vale ™

All Rights Reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To my husband’s grandmother. You may be gone, but you’ll never be forgotten. Love you always.

Acknowledgments

Golden Czermak - Photographer

My Brother’s Editor & Ink It Out Editing - My editors

Alyssa Garcia - Cover Artist & PA

My mom - Thank you for reading this book eight million three hundred and thirty-four times.

My betas. Y’all are so amazing. Thank you so much for what you do.

Other titles by Lani Lynn Vale

The Freebirds

Boomtown

Highway Don’t Care

Another One Bites the Dust

Last Day of My Life

Texas Tornado

I Don’t Dance

The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC

Lights To My Siren

Halligan To My Axe

Kevlar To My Vest

Keys To My Cuffs

Life To My Flight

Charge To My Line

Counter To My Intelligence

Right To My Wrong

Code 11- KPD SWAT

Center Mass

Double Tap

Bang Switch

Execution Style

Charlie Foxtrot

Kill Shot

Coup De Grace

The Uncertain Saints

Whiskey Neat

Jack & Coke

Vodka On The Rocks

Bad Apple

Dirty Mother

Rusty Nail

The Kilgore Fire Series

Shock Advised

Flash Point

Oxygen Deprived

Controlled Burn

Put Out

I Like Big Dragons Series

I Like Big Dragons and I Cannot Lie

Dragons Need Love, Too

Oh, My Dragon

The Dixie Warden Rejects

Beard Mode

Fear the Beard

Son of a Beard

I’m Only Here for the Beard

The Beard Made Me Do It

Beard Up

For the Love of Beard

Law & Beard

There’s No Crying in Baseball

Pitch Please

Quit Your Pitchin’

Listen, Pitch

The Hail Raisers

Hail No

Go to Hail

Burn in Hail

What the Hail

The Hail You Say

Hail Mary

The Simple Man Series

Kinda Don’t Care

Maybe Don’t Wanna

Get You Some

Ain’t Doin’ It

Too Bad So Sad

Bear Bottom Guardians MC

Mess Me Up

Talkin’ Trash

How About No

My Bad

One Chance, Fancy

It Happens

Keep It Classy

Snitches Get Stitches

F-Bomb

The Southern Gentleman Series

Hissy Fit

Lord Have Mercy

KPD Motorcycle Patrol

Hide Your Crazy

It Wasn’t Me

I’d Rather Not

Make Me

Sinners are Winners

If You Say So

SWAT 2.0

Just Kidding

Fries Before Guys

Maybe Swearing Will Help

Ask Me If I Care

May Contain Wine

Joke’s on You

Join the Club

Any Day Now

Say it Ain’t So

Officially Over It

Nobody Knows

Depends Who’s Asking

Valentine Boys

Herd That

Crazy Heifer

Chute Yeah

Get Bucked

Souls Chapel Revenants

Repeat Offender

Conjugal Visits

Jailbait

Doin’ A Dime

Kitty, Kitty

Gen Pop

Inmate of the Month

Madd CrossFit Series

No Rep

Jerk It

Chalk Dirty to Me

Battle Crows MC

Always Someone’s Monster

Make Me Your Villain

Rattle Some Cages

Not A Role Model

Get Tragic

Strange and Unusual

Never Trust The Living

Gator Bait MC

Nobody Cares Unless You’re Pretty

Good Trouble

Cute But Psycho

Blurb

The problem with Wake was that he was understandable. He was the type of villain that literally scared the absolute shit out of you because you knew that under the right circumstances, you could end up exactly like him.

Which, sadly, was the case for me.

I’d done the exact same thing as Wake, and now I was a murderer just like him.

Did I know that I did wrong? Hell yes.

Did I regret that? Hell no.

Did I plan on changing a thing? Also, no.

Was I falling in love with a man that should scare the shit out of me? A resounding hell yes.

CHAPTER 1

I just overheard a girl order a margarita after being told they didn’t have Diet Cokes.

-Dutch to Tomas

DUTCH

“Hello, Lois,” I said to the small girl.

Lois didn’t smile. She never did.

Lois’s mother, Tamra, looked at me hesitantly.

Last week, we’d spoken about Lois having a session with me without her present, to see if Lois would interact with me. It was a last-ditch effort to get her to open up.

This morning, through a phone call with Tamra before my practice had opened, we’d talked about her being able to watch Lois through the surveillance system that I had in my personal office.

And she’d agreed.

But I could tell that she was still struggling. She didn’t want to leave Lois alone, because Lois freaked out when her mother strayed too far from her sight. When she’d first started coming here, it was because Lois started to throw a fit each time Lois’s father would come near her.

And, against her husband’s wishes, she’d started bringing Lois to my office in hopes that I could help get the six-year-old talking.

I just had to get her to open up. To do that, I was hoping that her mother being gone might get her to do that.

“If you need me, you know where I am, right?” Tamra said to Lois.

Lois looked up, obviously having heard her mother’s promise before they’d entered my office, and nodded her head carefully.

Tamra closed the door quietly, and Lois looked at me expectantly.

“That’s one of my most favorite books in the world,” I said about the book, Goodnight Moon.

“Why?” Lois asked.

“I have no clue,” I admitted. “I just really used to like all the colors. Green is my favorite color in the world. Like the color of a frog. And your eyes.”

“I have hazel eyes,” she corrected me. “Mommy said so.”

“You do,” I confirmed. “Hazel just means that your eyes change colors. Today, for instance, your eyes are green. Last week when you came in, your eyes were more gray. They matched your shirt.”

She looked down at her dark blue shirt, then up at me. “Yeah.”

“Would you like to talk about your new school today?” I asked. “Your mommy said that you went this week. How was that?”

She surprised me by actually answering. “There are no boys there. I like it.”

My brows rose nearly to my hairline. I quickly hid my surprise, though.

Instead, I focused on her and what she was saying. “You didn’t like going to school with boys?”

“No,” she said softly. “This school, there are only girls. Period. Even the teachers are girls.”

My heart started pumping so hard I could practically hear the whoosh in my ears.

“You don’t like being around boys?” I repeated my question.

“No,” she whispered. “Boys become bigger boys. Daddies.”

I felt my stomach sink. “Your daddy isn’t bad, is he?”

She looked into my eyes, then said three words. “He’s the worst.”

Three hours later, I waved to the police officer. The last one in my office.

Detective Ramirez.

He was watching me with his all-knowing cop eyes.

“We will handle this,” he assured me.

He might try.

But I had a feeling that it wouldn’t matter.

Not when Lois’s father was so high up in the government. He had friends in very high places, and I could read the indecision on the detectives’ faces that this was about to get ugly. That things weren’t going to go how I wanted them to.

And I was right.

Three weeks to the day that Lois had told me that her father had touched her—hurt her in the worst way possible—Detective Ramirez came by to tell me the bad news. Lois’s father, Tony Haskins, would not be facing charges for the molestation of his daughter.

Even worse, something tragic had happened to Lois. She’d had a near drowning accident in the family’s pool, and they feared that her brain was dead.

I knew the truth, though.

I knew, and I would be doing what I needed to do to get that baby justice.

Even if I had to see the inside of a jail cell in order to do it.

CHAPTER 2

There is no murder. Just happy little accidents.

-Dutch’s secret thoughts

DUTCH

Accident, Florida resident, Wake Westfield, a graduate of West Point and an honorably discharged retired Army Officer, was charged with fourteen counts of first-degree murder. Shocking the world, the judge and jury felt that the maximum penalty for life without parole was too harsh a punishment. Afterall, murdering fourteen pedophiles, one of which was guilty of hurting your daughter, is understandably acceptable.

The jury came back with a ten-year jail sentence. Westfield will spend the next ten years behind bars, with the possibility of parole at eight.

Westfield is a hero among locals who, by far, rallied around him as he made their town safer.

I read the article that was dated almost eight years ago to the day. Again. Hoping that I was doing the right thing by sending it to whom I was sending it to.

I’d already made the move from Maine to Accident, Florida. Wake Westfield’s hometown.

As of last night, Lois had perished.

She had died at her father’s hands, and I knew it with such a certainty that I was prepared to do what I needed to make sure that Tony Haskins never touched another little girl again.

I picked up my pen, stared at the blank piece of paper, then pressed it against the blank topmost left edge.

Then I started writing.

My name is Dutch Duvall Panchek.

I’m thirty years old, and I need to know how to kill a man and get away with it.

I had to bribe a guard, who happens to be a very good friend, to get this to you. I know it’s a bit ‘weird’ but if anyone would understand, I knew you would.

A year ago, a little girl started to come to my practice. She was scared shitless of damn near everything, and any time her mother left her even to grab a tissue from across the room, the girl would freak out.

And by freak out, I mean, scream and cry in terror, freak out.

It took me a year to get her to talk. And when she did, I learned that her father, a member of our government, had been hurting her in the most disgusting of ways.

As of last week, the little girl, Lois, perished in a drowning ‘accident.’ Two days after that, her mother, Tamra, took her life by ‘overdosing’ on pills.

However, I know that Tamra wouldn’t do that. After learning of what her little girl went through, I’d seen fire in her eyes. Retribution. I know that Tamra, even after losing her daughter, wouldn’t make that decision. She was too angry. That anger would’ve kept her on this earth long enough to take her husband out with her.

And now, both witnesses to the hideous act are dead.

Leaving me alone to live with what that man’s done.

Which is why I’m writing you. I will not let him live his life as if he isn’t the vilest creature on this Earth.

He will pay for what he’s done, and that’s where you come in.

I want you to help me get away with murder.

Sincerely, Dutch Panchek.

After making sure that the letter was sealed, I walked it up to my brother, who was a corrections officer at the same prison that housed Wake Westfield—life was grand, how it worked out like that. What were the odds that my brother would be working the same prison?

It was a happy coincidence, one that I planned on capitalizing on handsomely.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked, looking at the letter as if it was going to grow teeth and bite him.

“I’ve never been more sure about something in my life,” I admitted. “Take it to him. Bring me back his reply.”

As far as my brother knew, I was writing an inmate to research my upcoming book that I’d made up just for a ‘cover.’

Though, now that I’d been thinking about it for so long, I might very well write it. The psyches of inmates were definitely an interesting thing. Some inmates were apologetic about the reason they’d been imprisoned, while others were straight-up uncaring. I loved the dynamic of the ones that knew they’d done something bad, yet couldn’t give a single fuck.

“Do you think that you can get me a meeting with him next week?” I asked, blinking big blue eyes in his direction.

My brother, who was a redhead just like me, stared at me with the same blue eyes. Only, they weren’t nearly as ‘sweet.’

At least, I hoped mine appeared sweet.

“You’re so full of shit,” Tomas grumbled. “I’m doing this only because I know that you’re going to find a way to get it done on your own. And don’t try that same bullshit you tried the first time.”

“You mean, don’t try to talk to the inmate?” I asked. “Without first getting your approval?”

The thing was, being a psychologist, I was put in front of a lot of criminals that needed to be diagnosed. I spent a lot of time at the prison talking to them about decisions that got them into their predicament in the first place.

The one Tomas was talking about in particular was actually a man that’d killed his wife while he was having flashbacks of war. The man had thrown a punch in his sleep, knocked the wife backward, and she’d fallen and hit her head on the corner of the nightstand. She’d suffered a brain aneurysm.

When I’d gone to visit and talk with the man, he’d had another flashback, and had tried to take me out like he’d once taken his enemies out.

I’d left that day with a bruised ego and a bruised tailbone from throwing myself backward.

Tomas had gone out of his way to make sure to vet the guys I saw beforehand and make sure they were restrained if need be.

“I do what I want,” I told my brother. “You know that.”

“I do,” he grumbled. “Just promise that you’ll let me talk to him, feel him out, before you go about trying to meet him, okay? It’s gonna take me a few days.”

I rolled my eyes. “You have one.”

He sighed and left with my letter in his hand.

I felt the nervous butterflies that felt more like a swarming flock of birds take flight in my stomach.

Would he freak out and tell someone? Or would he keep my secret?

Well, soon I’d know the answer.

I just wasn’t sure I was ready for it.

CHAPTER 3

I suffer from ‘CHS.’ Can’t hear shit.

-Wake to Davis

WAKE

“You’re what?” I asked as I leaned back in my bunk, my overly long hair partially hiding my eyes as I tried to sleep despite the lights still being on.

“I’m getting out soon,” the man on my left, Kyle Davis, better known by his last name only, said. “They told me last week that I was getting a court date.”

I grinned. “That’s good news, man. You sure you’re ready for that?”

Davis said a few choice words and then, “I’m ready for some pussy. I’ll figure the rest out after.”

I snorted out a laugh.

Weren’t we all?

It’d been nearly eight long years of nothing but my fist—sometimes I spiced shit up by switching from my left fist to my right—and I was more than ready for a warm, willing pussy myself.

Later in the week, I had my own parole hearing.

What were the odds that six of the men I was closest to in this place were getting out at nearly the same time?

Was this a setup?

I didn’t do coincidences.

I did facts. Cold, hard facts.

And something in my gut was telling me that shit wasn’t right here.

They didn’t just let men go from prison without having a reason.

I mean, Davis still had four years left of his sentence. Aodhan, our resident Irishman, still had six. Then there was Bain, who had three. Cassius, who had two. Then there was Etienne, who had three years left on his sentence, without the possibility of parole.

So what the fuck was going on?

I wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth or anything, but shit wasn’t right.

Good things didn’t happen to men like us.

We made things happen.

There was a huge difference.

“Mail!” a guard, the redheaded one who had a permanent scowl on his face, growled. “Westfield.”

I got up and took the letter from him.

He narrowed his eyes at me and said, “I have something to talk to you about later.”

I looked at the letter and frowned.

It wasn’t opened.

Usually, if I had mail either from my brother or sister, it was opened. The contents already perused to make sure they weren’t conspiring with us to break us out.

“You got mail?” Davis asked. “It’s not even Wednesday.”

Shit was definitely getting weird lately.

“Is it from your sister?”

I looked up to find Etienne awake and staring at me from his own cell across the walkway in front of me.

“No,” I admitted. “Actually, I’m not too sure who it’s from.”

“Your sister coming to visit soon?” Davis asked.

I narrowed my eyes. “My sister will not marry you, motherfucker.”

I’d met Davis, Aodhan, Bain, Cassius, and Etienne in prison. Though, I’d known Aodhan because he’d once been married to my sister.

Of all the places for us to meet up again, this place hadn’t been the one I’d expected.

I liked them all, and they’d all proved more than once that they would have my back if shit hit the fan—and inside of a maximum-security prison that housed all of the baddies of the region, that happened more often than not.

“You never know,” Davis grumbled.

I knew.

My sister, Danyetta, was likely to never marry anyone ever again.

Hopefully, that was something she just said and never followed through with. But my sister was as stubborn as they came.

“Well, if it’s not from your sister,” Etienne asked. “Then who’s it from?”

Etienne’s Cajun accent was thick with sleep, letting me know that I hadn’t been the only one taking a nap.

There wasn’t much we could do on lockdown days—days where shit hit the fan in the prison and they locked us in our cells until shit calmed down—but sleep, do bodyweight exercises, or talk to your cell neighbors.

Etienne had decided that a nap was for him.

Much like I’d tried to do, yet Davis had all but forced me to stay awake.

“I already said I don’t know,” I grumbled as I tore into the envelope.

My eyes scanned the contents of the letter, and my stomach sank.

It was the last words on the paper that did me in, though.

I want you to help me get away with murder.

Sincerely, Dutch Panchek.

Dutch Panchek.

What kind of name was that?

I could tell she was female, however, just by the way her writing looked so bubbly and upbeat.

“Well?” Davis asked.

I folded the letter, then stashed it away in the hidden compartment of the bed that no guard had found yet, and then allowed my mind to wander.

“Some girl. She wants to meet,” I answered.

Etienne and Davis started to talk to each other, but my mind went to that long-ago night when my life had changed.

“Girl?” Davis said.

But my mind had already taken me to where my nightmares loved to take hold of me and hold me down, keeping me there as I relived the worst moment of my life.

I’d gotten home early from work.

Even after being early, I’d walked inside, and knew without a doubt that everyone inside of it was asleep.

Or at least should be.

Tex, our eight-month-old Golden Retriever, met me at the door with a wiggly butt.

I bent down to scratch him around the ears, cursing when he yelped as I did.

My wife, Amber, had allowed him to go for a few days without any ear infection medication, and it would obviously be up to me to deal with it tomorrow on my only day off.

“Sorry, buddy,” I said to Tex. “I’ll get you fixed up tomorrow. In the meantime, we’ll put what’s left of the medication in your ear from last time.”

I did that, then went in search of my wife.

I found her sleeping in our bed, her phone in one hand, and the television remote in the other.

I stared at her for a long time, hating that I felt nothing for her any longer.

Years ago, when we’d married, I’d fancied myself in love. But over time, that love had morphed into something more like friendship. The little things that I used to think were cute, were nothing but annoying now.

Such as her penchant for jacking the TV up so loud that she couldn’t hear me entering our house, let alone if our daughter Lauren, or Lolo for short, cried out for her in the middle of the night.

After turning the TV off, I put the remote on the nightstand then went next door to my daughter’s room.

I opened the door, and at first, couldn’t quite comprehend what I was seeing.

Then, when the reality of what I was seeing was finally known, somehow my mind disassociated with my body.

I moved before I could really think, yanking my wife’s brother, Braxton, off of my eight-year-old and throwing him so hard into the wall beside her bed that there was an audible wheeze as the breath left his body.

When he didn’t immediately get up, I turned my gaze to my daughter, who was looking at me with tears streaming down her face.

“He wouldn’t get off of me, Daddy,” Lolo whispered.

I felt something akin to a rock lodge itself in my throat.

“Come here,” I said softly, picking her up.

Her nightgown was torn, and I had no clue how far he’d gotten in his assault of my daughter.

“I’m so happy you came home, Daddy,” Lolo whispered into my neck, clutching me so hard that I was finding it difficult to breathe.

That night was forever ingrained in my brain.

Seeing the man that was supposed to protect my daughter hurting her instead.

As far as the counselors knew, and what Lolo had told us, Braxton hadn’t gotten very far in his assault.

But him even having the sick thought to try anything with her was enough for me to go nuclear.

Braxton had been killed by my own bare hands.

Then, all the other child molesters in the area, ones that the system hadn’t taken care of, met the same death.

I hadn’t been careful. I’d been pissed as hell.

So getting caught by the police hadn’t come as that much of a surprise.

After killing her brother, Amber had decided that we were better off not being married.

Which worked for me, because I didn’t think I could ever forgive her for what she’d allowed to happen. Even if it hadn’t technically been Amber’s fault.

I’d been telling Amber for years that her brother was bad news.

That had been the beginning of the end for us—her inability to see her brother in a clear light.

Her assurance that he was a good man had been her downfall. And our daughter had been the one to suffer because of it.

Needless to say, our marriage hadn’t been meant to survive, and after receiving the divorce papers in prison, I’d happily signed them.

“Yo,” Etienne said as he looked at me across the walkway. “What’s wrong?”

What was wrong?

I hated child abuse in any form. I hated it more when the motherfuckers got away with it.

I didn’t know this Dutch Panchek, but if she turned out to be legit, well then I’d tell her exactly what she needed to do to get away with murder.

CHAPTER 4

I accept apologies in the form of cash.

-Dutch’s secret thoughts

DUTCH

“I feel violated,” I admitted to my brother as I made my way through the security area of the penitentiary that he worked for.

“At least you don’t have to go through it every time you go to work like I do.” Tomas grinned.

That was true.

If I had to go through that every day I worked, I would be a hell of a lot less dressed up. Having to take off every single piece of jewelry I owned was a giant pain in the ass. Had I known, I wouldn’t have worn any jewelry at all.

“Why are you so dressed up, anyway?” Tomas asked.

Because I’m about to meet a really hot inmate, and I want to make a good impression.

What I said instead was, “Because I have a meeting with the district attorney after this.”

“The one that has a giant crush on you, yet refuses to admit it?” he asked.

I rolled my eyes.

Darriel was thirty-five years old, had never been married, and was a knockout. The only problem with him was that he was married to his job, and rarely gave anyone enough time of day to let them in.

I wasn’t sure why I’d been allowed in, to be honest, but it was one of those things that I decided not to question.

But, had Darriel Mackson decided that I was actually worth the time of day, and he wanted to pursue me, I knew what I’d say. No.

Why?

Because Darriel was too ‘good.’

He was too black and white. He refused to see the gray of the world, and God forbid he admit that he was wrong about something. Such as putting a man in prison for doing the job he should’ve fucking done himself.

Cough, cough, Wake Westfield, cough, cough.

Speaking of Wake Westfield… I was nervous as fuck to meet him.

I’d only ever heard about him through the grapevine.

Moving to Accident, Florida had been very enlightening. All the way up until everyone told me his entire life story, such as his ex-wife, Amber.

Amber, however, had zero love for him.

Not that I knew why, because apparently everything wrong in their marriage had been his fault, but I definitely wasn’t short on information about the man.

Obviously, being a licensed therapist meant that people talked to you about their troubles, whether you wanted them to or not.

I mean, Jesus Christ. Today I went to grab a latte from the local coffee shop, Ground Me, and the owner of the shop, Morrigan St. Pete, had given me her every complaint about every single customer that’d shown that day.

I loved Morrigan and all, and even though I’d only known her a very short time, I knew that one day she would be a very good friend. However, it would be nice to go in and get coffee without hearing who pissed who off that day.

“When they get you Westfield,” Tomas said, “for the love of God, don’t tell him anything about me. How or why you were able to get a meeting with him. Okay?”

I rolled my eyes. “I already told you in the parking lot that I wouldn’t say anything! Okay?”

Tomas covertly flipped me off, then he pointed to another guard that was standing beside a door that likely led farther into the prison.

“Go see him. And don’t come cryin’ to me when he doesn’t give you shit for your book, okay?” Tomas grumbled.

I gave him a thumbs up, then said, “Bye, Tomas.”

I didn’t wait for his reply, instead, heading straight to the man that I’d seen a time or two in town.

He never spoke to anyone, but I had seen him with his wife at the grocery store following behind her patiently.

I smiled at him when I arrived in front of him.

“Mick?” I asked curiously as I held out my hand. “I’m Dutch.”

“Dutch,” he said as he took my hand. “That’s a weird name for a girl.”

“It is,” I confirmed. “But my mother knew two things about my father. One, that he was an asshole, and two, that he was Dutch.”

“So she named you after someone she didn’t like?” Mick asked curiously.

“Tomas got the Dutchman’s first name. I got the Dutchman’s nationality. I don’t think she liked either one of us all that much and wanted to give us a name to prove it,” I told him bluntly.

Which was true.

If there was anyone in this world that deserved to never have children, it was Mary Lou Carpenter. Even the ones that she’d had were practically taken away from her.

Though, Mary Lou had done one good thing for me. She’d instilled a drive in me that encouraged me to get a very good job and get the hell away from her while doing that job.

The moment that I graduated from Texas Tech, I’d moved away, and hadn’t looked back since.

And hell, had college not been practically free due to my mother’s working at said college, I certainly wouldn’t have gone there. I’d have been gone the day I turned eighteen and could legally move out of her house.

“We got you a room set up where lawyers usually meet with the inmates. Once I have you there, I’ll go get Westfield. Okay?” Mick asked.

I gave him a thumbs up, then he was gone, leaving me alone in a stark room that had all the furniture bolted down to the floor.

I sat, then studied my outfit.

I’d gone with a pencil skirt that left very little to the imagination, and a sleeveless white top that hugged every single curve and fat roll.

After situating myself, and making sure that my stomach was hidden by my bag—even though I’d lost weight, years and years of covering up the extra girth around my belly never quite went away—I waited patiently with my eyes on the door.

I heard the murmuring and the thudding steps before I saw anyone.

“I’m not interested in giving anyone an interview,” Wake snapped from the hallway.

“Dutch has done a lot for this community. You will talk to her, even if it is to give her the bare minimum,” Mick growled.

That was a stretch.

I’d donated a lot of time to the community, sure. Right when I’d moved here, they’d had a hurricane. I’d been a “big help” according to the mayor with children and adults that were traumatized by the storm. I’m sure my brother made it out to be bigger than it actually was. Only someone that was heartless would not lend that listening shoulder out when needed.

There was a long moment of silence and then, “Did you say her name was Dutch?”

My heart started to beat a thousand miles an hour, then my breath left me when the man first appeared.

Holy.

Shit.

Wake Westfield’s mugshots and photos that were plastered in the newspaper didn’t do him any justice.

In fact, if I had to admit to anything ever being wrong with Wake’s appearance, it was that he was too hot.

Holy hell, was he sexy.

He was tall, about six foot three or four, and had the broadest shoulders I’d ever seen.

Those shoulders were muscular, too.

As in, I could curl my fingers around the tops of both shoulder caps, and only get my fingers partially around them.

His traps were excellent, too.

If he were to come to my gym, he would be the one everyone watched.

He prowled toward me, and even in chains, it was evident that he owned the room he was walking into.

“You Dutch?” he asked as he sat down.

A shiver danced down my spine at how intimate him saying my name felt.

“Yes,” I answered, amazed that I hadn’t stuttered.

Thank God for speech classes that forced me out of my comfort zones.

He gestured toward Mick with a flick of his hand and said, “Give us the room. I’m not saying shit to her with you hovering over my shoulder.”

While his face was turned toward Mick, I was studying all the tattoos on his body. The way his jawline looked like it was carved from granite.

He had a nice, close-cropped brownish-red beard, bordering a set of fantastic lips.

“Be good,” Mick said. “I was supposed to handcuff you to the table.”

Supposed to? And he didn’t?

That was a surprise.

Not that I minded.

But still.

When or if my brother walked in, he’d have a shit fit to end all shit fits.

Those beautiful brown eyes rolled my way as he processed Mick’s words, and I felt my stomach drop at the sight of all his attention solely focused on me.

His brown hair that was shaved on the sides and longer on top fell into those eyes, momentarily breaking our stare off, and I felt relief flow through me.

He waited until Mick’s footsteps could no longer be heard before he said, “How the hell did you make this happen?”

He was wondering how the hell I’d managed to get in here and talk to him. How I’d managed to get a letter to him without getting it read first.

I could really get him in trouble, sure.

But… I was banking on the fact that he was willing to risk it.

CHAPTER 5

Finally realized that I wasn’t asking too much. I was just asking the wrong person.

-Wake to Dutch

WAKE

A redhead.

I didn’t know what I expected of her when it came from a single letter, but this woman definitely wasn’t it.

She was tall, not nearly my height, no. But she was definitely taller than the average female. Five-seven or eight, if I had to guess. And those lips.

I’d never seen a set of lips on a female before that I thought I would call ‘kissable’ but those were definitely a set that I would. Her eyes were an interesting shade of blue. Not quite blue or green, but a mixture of the two. Hell, I wouldn’t even call them hazel, either, because there was no hint of brown in them at all.

And the freckles.

I’d never found them attractive before, but on this woman? She sure the fuck rocked the freckles.

Or, possibly, it was the fact that she was the first woman I’d seen outside of a guard, my daughter or my sister since I’d arrived in this place eight goddamn years ago.

Though, her in that skirt and tight sleeveless top that showed off miles of arms and legs? It might just straight up be because she worked the outfit, and her body well.

I wouldn’t necessarily call her voluptuous, per se, but she definitely had some meat on her bones. Meat that was in all the right places and was proportioned so well that it made me want to grab hold and never let go.

“So you’re Dutch?” I asked as I took a seat.

The chains around my feet and my hands rattled.

It’d be really fuckin’ nice when I didn’t have to wear these stupid things anymore.

The day that I no longer heard chains rattling all night and day, I knew that I’d sleep like a goddamn baby.

“That’s me.” Her voice was soft. Hesitant.

“Why are you here?” I asked. “To get the answer to that question?”

She tilted her head sideways, as if she wasn’t quite sure how to answer, then suddenly got up and started to walk around the room.

At first, it took me a few seconds to figure out what the hell she was doing.

Then I saw her making a purposeful search of the area.

Making sure that there were no recording devices where she could be overheard.

“This probably should’ve been the first thing that I did,” she admitted. “I had plenty of time while I waited for them to bring you in here.”

I sat back in my chair and allowed my eyes to look their fill.

“Nothing in this part of the prison,” I admitted. “It’s the deepest, most secure part, where all the lawyers conduct meetings with inmates.”

She continued to circle the room and look, even bending over near the table to look underneath, giving me an excellent view of her ass. Oh, and the panties that she was wearing.

Not that she showed me any skin, but I could definitely see the outline of her thong through the skin-tight fabric of her skirt.

My dick hardened, and I wondered if she got a good look at it before she righted herself and took her seat once again.

“Why did the guard say he should handcuff you to the table?” she asked curiously, her cheeks a little pink.

Yeah, she’d gotten a look at my dick.

“Because he should have,” I admitted. “Most do.”

She blinked. “And why didn’t he?”

“Because he trusts me not to murder you.” I shrugged. “You still want the answer to that question?”

She blinked. “Yes, why do you think I’m here?”

My lips twitched. “Because you wanted to see me squirm? I don’t know. I’m almost out of here. I have a hearing set for this week. I fuck up now, that means I’m denied parole. Taking two more years away from me, possibly. Those two years where my daughter’s still a fuckin’ kid.”

Lolo turned sixteen this year. This month, actually. I’d missed the majority of her life.

And even though my sister brought Lolo to see me, and Lolo understood why I’d been arrested and imprisoned, that still didn’t make missing her life any easier.

There was only one way I’d give up that information—how to kill someone—and the lady had hit the nail right on the head.

“I’m not here to hurt you in any way,” she admitted. “I’m here because I want to hurt someone else. I want to make it to where he’s not able to do this to someone else, which I have a feeling he’s considering his status in life. He’s ruined two lives that I know of for sure, and I’m sure it’s not the first, or the last, time he’ll do it.”

“What’s this guy’s name?” I asked, leaning back in my chair.

Dutch studied me for a long, drawn-out moment before saying, “If I tell you, that just makes you an accessory if I do a bad job at hiding my tracks. And, just sayin’, it’s gonna be hard as fuck to do as it is with who he is. Hiding it’s gonna take a miracle.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, then stared at her until she got the picture.

I wasn’t going to give her a single thing without knowing who it was.

The look on my face proved it, too.

“Senator Tony Haskins. Texas,” she whispered.

Haskins.

Why did that sound so familiar to me?

It wasn’t like I would really know any government people out of my own home state—who the hell did?—but the name… it rang so familiar with me that I felt that I knew him in some way.

“Why do I know that name?” I asked curiously.

“He’s been in the news a lot lately about introducing a bill that ‘protects children from depression’ and he’s getting a lot of bipartisan support for it.” She sounded disgusted. “As if he cares about kids when he did such disgusting things to his own child. Depression. Pfft.”

The sound she made caused my mouth to quirk.

I could tell with one statement how she felt about the man.

He sounded like a real winner.

And, in that moment, I made a rash decision that I hoped didn’t bite me in the ass.

“You promise, cross your heart and hope to die, stick a thousand needles in your eye, that you’ll never, ever, ever mention me again after this day?” I asked.

She leaned forward, her eyes huge, as she said, “I promise. Swear to God, I won’t.”

I searched her face. Made sure that I let her see the consequences that would befall her if she ever snitched and then took a deep breath.

“You know what lye is?”

She blinked. “Like lye the soap?”

“Yeah,” I confirmed. “The shit that you get when you make your own soap. They used to use it exclusively in the pioneer days. Now the preppers are using it, too, going back to the old ways. You need seventy-five pounds of it. Once you have it, heat it up to three hundred degrees and then submerge the body. Leave the body in it for three hours. It’ll completely dissolve it in that time.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Of course, you’re going to have to find a way to get the body into the solution. That’s going to be the hard part. My suggestion for that is to go to a trades day and get one of those massive fuckin’ cauldrons that are made out of cast iron. Depending on the size of this senator, you can use that. Start a big bonfire, then suspend it from one of those large metal triangles. I’d suggest going to a metal fabrication place and having them make you a stand. Once you’re done, I’d plant some fuckin’ pansies in it.”

She shook her head in surprise. “How do I get the body to where I want it?”

I smiled.

Then I gave her step-by-step instructions for how to lure the senator to where she wanted him, how to kill him without drawing a single drop of blood, and how to get the body into the cauldron that I recommended.

“Don’t do any of this inside the city limits. Get you a place in the country where it won’t look weird that you’re going around on a tractor.” I eyed her up and down. “A slip of a girl like you won’t be able to handle a two-hundred-pound man by yourself. Especially dead weight.”

“Won’t someone get suspicious if I just go out and buy seventy-five pounds of lye?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Tell them you’re starting a pretzel business. Or a soap business. For that do-it-yourself website. Itsy. That’s why you’re buying the property out of town. Hell, I’m sure at this point you can find one in the swamps, too. That would’ve been my next suggestion, but some places in there you need an airboat to navigate. And that might really cause people to go ‘hmm’ if you’ve never shown interest in that before.”

“Etsy?” she corrected me. “You think someone will fall for that?”

“Anyone wants to explain something to better fit the narrative. You’re an unassuming, cute, small little redhead. Someone’s not going to look at you and expect you to be using that lye to boil and dissolve a body.”

She pulled out her phone and started to type.

“What are you doing?”

She looked up and said, “Taking notes. I want to make sure I don’t forget this. Then I’ll have to come see you again, and you’ve already made it abundantly clear that you don’t ever want to see me again. So… taking notes.”

I looked at her phone, and a longing hit me so hard that I said, “You have Facebook?”

She blinked. “Yes. Why?”

“I wanted to see if my daughter’s posted any new pictures.” I paused. “But I actually don’t think she uses Facebook anymore.”

“Snapchat,” she said. “Most have switched to that. Or Instagram. Facebook is the old person platform.”

My lips twitched. “I’m thirty-eight this year. I guess that qualifies me as old.”

She pursed her lips, then started typing again.

When she placed her phone on the table, I felt my heart start to pound when she spun it around, and I saw my daughter’s smiling face.

“Instagram,” she said. “She’s beautiful. Tasteful, too. I don’t often see tasteful Instagrams anymore. Kids these days grow up a lot faster than they used to.”

Tasteful.

That was my girl.

I looked at all her long brown hair that she got from me and that mean-mugging smirk.

God, she took my breath away.

“Fuck,” I said softly.

I didn’t touch her phone, even though I wanted to bring it closer to my face.

Realizing this, she stood up, walked around, and then stood next to me as she went through picture after picture.

Lolo with her friends. Lolo with our dog, Tex, at my sister’s house. Lolo with me when she was a baby.

None with her mom.

There were a lot with her friends.

“You did well with this one,” she said. “Congrats.”

“Her aunt did well,” I grumbled. “I’ve had nothing but letters with her for eight years, and an hour every two weeks.”

We hit the end of Lolo’s Instagram, and she pulled the phone off of the table and put it in a little side pocket in her skin-tight skirt.

She went to step away, and I caught her hand, the chains clinking together as I did.

She looked down at me, startled.

“Thank you,” I said softly.

She didn’t immediately pull away, and I felt that in my soul.

She didn’t pull away.

Oh, how she’d fucked up.

She just had no clue why or how yet.

I let her go, and she stepped away, rubbing her hands nervously down the front of her skirt.

“If you ever need anything, let me know,” she said softly. “The information you gave me is invaluable.”

I had to clench my hands to keep from grabbing her all over again.

And when she left five minutes later, I was left watching her go, wondering if she could make it happen without getting caught.

I wouldn’t have my answer until months and months later.

CHAPTER 6

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but screenshots will last forever.

-Lolo to Wake

WAKE

Six months later

I walked out of the prison a free man.

There were three people there to greet me.

My sister, Danyetta, my brother, Keir, and my daughter, Lolo.

The moment Lolo saw me, she took a running head start and slammed into me so hard that I was forced to take a couple of steps back.

God, she’d done some growing since I’d last seen her.

She’d turned into a woman in the blink of an eye.

“Fuck me,” I grumbled as I crushed her to me.

She threw her head back and laughed, her eyes sparkling with happiness.

“I missed you, Dad,” she called.

I swallowed hard.

The last time I’d really hugged her, she’d called me ‘daddy.’ Now I was ‘dad.’

That sucked.

“I missed you, too, baby,” I said softly. “How are you?”

I set her down so I could look into her eyes.

The pictures that I’d seen thanks to the psychologist didn’t do Lolo justice.

I’d seen her once in person since then, and Lolo had been diagnosed with fuckin’ strep throat after she had returned home. So she hadn’t been all that normal looking with her puffy eyes, red cheeks, and rat’s nest of hair.

She looked a hell of a lot better this time than she had the last time.

“Better.” She smiled. “Really good now that you’re out.”

I reached forward and tugged her into another tight hug before letting her go and reaching for my sister.

“Dan.” I pulled my sister in. “God, you’re fuckin’ tiny again.”

My sister snorted. “I think you mean ‘you lost all the baby weight,’ bro.”

Whatever had happened, I didn’t know. But she’d gotten a lot smaller. Then again, eight years would do that. Well, six years in prison and practically two years going through the trial process.

“How’s the ‘baby?’” I teased.

“That ‘baby’ isn’t a ‘baby’ anymore. He’s almost eight now.” She sighed. “And gets along with your girl like oil and water.”

I looked at my girl who didn’t even bother hiding her shrug.

“Being a ‘nerd’ isn’t a bad thing, Lolo.” I rolled my eyes.

Lolo’s laughter had me feeling lightness in my heart for the first time in what felt like forever.

The last person I looked at was Keir.

I offered him my hand, and he took it, his eyes watchful.

Keir and I had never seen eye to eye.

When I married my ex-wife, he’d gone out of his way to avoid Amber. It’d only been when I’d divorced her, and spent a year in prison, that I realized exactly why he’d avoided Amber.

Because he loved her.

Now, Amber and Keir were married, and they had their own kids.

Lolo didn’t spend time with them, though.

Lolo, after the attack, had decided that she couldn’t be around her mother anymore. Sadly, Amber looked a lot like her brother, who’d traumatized her.

And, since she’d been in the care of a psychologist at the time, it had been suggested that Lolo go to stay with my sister.

And that’s the way it’d been for the longest time.

Still, to this day, Lolo had trouble being in the same room as her mom.

But, as of today, her father was home. And having her father out of prison meant that she could finally be with her parent.

If that was what she wanted, after all.

My sister and Lolo had formed a very strong bond over the years that they’d been living together. And Bowie and Lolo had formed a brotherly-sisterly bond as well.

I wouldn’t take her from that if she didn’t want to go.

“Good to see you,” Keir offered, very standoffish.

I would’ve laughed at his discomfort had my sister not pinched me.

“Come on,” she ordered. “I got your ol’ truck ready to go in my driveway. And we got the renters moved out of your place.”

I winced.

My place wasn’t actually my place anymore.

After shit went down with Lolo, I’d sold our old place and purchased a new house. When Amber and Keir had married, Amber had moved into Keir’s house, leaving our barely lived in one completely empty. I had renters move into it after realizing I wouldn’t be back for a while.

I’d never lived in that house for more than a week.

But it would do for now until I found something I truly wanted.

Luckily, it was on the bay, giving me time to do whatever the hell I wanted.

“Don’t know why you want that old piece of shit,” Keir grumbled. “You’re a multimillionaire, and you’re gonna drive a POS from high school?”

“That POS from high school will be Lolo’s first car,” I teased, knowing it would cause Keir to get annoyed.

I knew the reason he hated my truck.

It was where I’d taken Amber’s virginity and tied her to me for the rest of our lives by creating Lolo. To Keir, that truck resembled something that would forever be a reminder that I’d been there first.

Not that I ever wanted Amber back.

Quite the opposite, actually.

If I could choose one person to ‘undo’ it would definitely be her.

Which was hard, because without her, I wouldn’t have Lolo. But without Amber, there would’ve never been Amber’s brother. Meaning, my child wouldn’t have been sexually assaulted by a man that was supposed to protect her. Not hurt her.

“I like it,” Lolo said. “I’ll drive the hell out of it. All the boys will be jealous.”

Danyetta hooked her arm around mine, then caught Lolo by the hand as she led us to her tiny little SUV.

I held out my hands for the keys, which she easily dropped into my waiting palm.

“Thanks,” I said as I eyed my brother. “You want to catch lunch with me?”

Keir shook his head, and then he was gone, leaving us alone.

When we got into Dan’s SUV, it was to Dan saying, “I can’t believe he even had the balls to come, to be honest. He’s been scared shitless of what you might say or do since we heard you were getting parole.”

I could very well imagine. The thing was, had my brother outright come to me and told me he was interested in Amber, I sure the fuck wouldn’t have thrown the fit he thought I’d throw. But he hadn’t even tried. He’d waited until I was in jail before they’d made it official.

I snorted. “I’m not going to do anything. If he wants to have Amber, that’s completely fine. It just sucks that he had to lose his niece to do it.”

I looked in the rearview mirror at Lolo. Lolo, who was smiling at me already.

“You okay?” I asked her.

Lolo met my eyes in the mirror and said, “I’m okay as long as she’s not here. It’s when she comes around that my mind likes to replay things…”

If I could take that from her, I would.

I clenched my hands on the steering wheel and said, “I’m home now, honey. If you don’t want to deal with her, I won’t make you.”

She blew out a shaky breath. “I was wondering… do you think that I can stay with Aunt Dan for a while?”

I looked at her until she brought her head up to stare at me before saying, “I’ll do anything and everything you want, baby. If you want to stay there forever, I’ll be there every night to hug you good night. Promise. I will never be upset with you. It was due to my bad decisions that led you to not choosing me, darlin’. I’ll never hold that against you for as long as I live.”

My sister patted my arm and whispered, “You’re such a good man, Wake Westfield.”

If only she knew just how wrong she was.

CHAPTER 7

Call me superglue, because I get attached.

-Wake to Dutch

WAKE

My first night as a free man, I stayed up thinking about multiple things.

Tex, who’d come home with me upon seeing me and getting so excited he passed out, placed his head on the side of my bed and nudged my hand.

I looked at him with a grin. “It’s only five, but if you’re up for a walk, Bud, I’ll take you for a walk.”

Tex jumped up at the word ‘walk’ just like he used to, and that was my first reason to smile that morning.

After brushing my teeth and changing into jogging shorts and tennis shoes—shoes that my sister had gotten for me upon hearing of my return—I headed out the door.

The blast of salty air hit me like a wet towel in the face, and I smiled for the second time that morning.

People don’t realize the things that they’ll miss until they’re taken away from them.

Such as the way your skin felt in warm, wet climates.

I never felt dry.

And swear to Christ, I didn’t miss having a wet taint while I was on the inside. Because, holy Mother of God, was it humid as fuck today. Mid-May, even at now six in the morning, was still hot and humid enough that I felt like I was breathing through a straw.

I’d have to get my taint deodorant out soon to prevent chafing when I ran—and yes, I had separate deodorants. One for my taint and one for my pits. It wouldn’t do to switch the two.

I also knew what it was like to be walking around with a chafed taint after running twenty miles the day before. Let’s just say it was very uncomfortable, and I only needed to learn my lesson once to never do it again.

Tex barked, and I looked up to see a woman walking.

My brow rose, because she was all in black, and I hadn’t even seen her until she was practically on top of me.

“Oh, hello,” she chirped. “Nice to see you. How are you?”

I blinked at the woman’s welcomeness.

It was even weirder that she would say ‘hi’ to a man in the dark with nothing to protect her.

“Good. How’s it going?” I asked as she stopped.

“Are you new to the neighborhood?” she asked curiously.

My lips quirked. “I am. Sort of. I was renting my place out but just moved back home.”

“Ahh,” she said. “That explains it. I thought I knew everyone in the neighborhood.” She pointed. “That’s my house right there. I’m Dory. It’s nice to meet you. And you have a very fat dog.”

I had to chuckle as she waved a quick goodbye and left just as fast as she’d arrived.

Tex, who’d taken the break to breathe loudly at my feet, groaned when I started him back up again.

“Listen, Tex,” I said to my old dog. “She was right. You have some good years left in you if we get some of this weight off of you. I missed the first eight years of your life. I certainly don’t want to cut that life short when I missed so much.”

It really did fuck me up that I’d missed so much with him.

I’d been training him since six months old to do the things that I’d always wanted a dog to do—it took me a year to convince Amber that Lolo and I needed the dog—when I’d been put in prison.

It sucked balls that I missed all those things I trained him to do.

We paused when I saw the lights at Dan’s house were on.

When she opened the door and stepped outside, gesturing me toward her with a cup of coffee in each hand, I grinned.

“How did you know I was near?” I questioned.

She pointed at the dog. “Tex. The escape artist. I have an AirTag on him. He likes to go visit the old lady down the street whenever he wants to, then he likes to go by the old man’s place on the way back. And sometimes, it’s just nice to know where he is, you know?”

I snorted. “If you wanted to track me, sis, all you had to do was ask.”

She rolled her eyes, then sobered as she handed me the coffee before taking a seat on her top porch step.

I unclipped the dog from the leash and then took up a seat beside her.

“I didn’t want to track you,” she said. “I swear. You’ll go outside one day thinking that he’ll be there, and then you’ll be finding him down the street.”

I shrugged. “I don’t care if you want to track me, FYI. I’m already wondering if I need to have an altogether live version of my whereabouts at all times.”

Not only did I fully expect the pedophile sheriff to start harassing me any second, but I needed to know why the hell I was out so early in the first place.

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“I want to know why I’m out,” I said to my sister.

My sister looked up at me sharply. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…” I blew out a breath, leaned back in my seat, and said, “I got out about a year and a half early. But on top of that, I had friends that got out early, too. Ones that still had years left to serve. And I want to know why.”

She frowned. “I know the DA. He comes into the restaurant all the time.”

My sister owned a restaurant, DJ’s, about an hour away. It was so popular that people from all over the world traveled to it to eat. It wasn’t a restaurant that would get a Michelin Star. It was just a great place, on the water, where you could listen to the waves crash, and vibe to good music in a fantastic atmosphere.

I’d helped Danyetta get it started a couple of years after she’d graduated high school. It’d been her dream to cook and own a restaurant. So I’d helped her, even though I’d have rather her do something a whole lot less stressful than that.

“So you’re going to ask him?” I wondered. “Just straight up?”

She smiled. “No. But I will worm my way in there.”

I grinned, leaning sideways to drape myself against the support pole. “Sheriff Graydon is going to be a problem.”

As in, a major problem.

I had a feeling I was about to see that problem in the very near future.

Once he knew that I was out, he wouldn’t waste time in making his way to my place, trying to throw his weight around and act like he was an actual sheriff.

“Sheriff Graydon needs to get a fuckin’ clue.”

I tipped my head back and stared at my daughter who’d uttered those words.

I grinned and held out my hand. “What are you doing up so early?”

“Heard a man talking.” She winced. “Wanted to see who it was. I forgot you got out last night.”

I smiled when she snuggled close, practically shoving herself into my body as close as she could possibly get. “You sleep good?”

She’d been a rough sleeper ever since the incident. A few years ago, we’d had to start her on a low dose of a sleep med that could help her sleep.

“Actually,” she breathed deeply, then blew it out slow. “I slept great. I forgot my med and everything.”

I wanted to say it was because I was finally out, that she finally got to sleep at night knowing she was safe now that I was able to get to her. But what the most likely culprit was her being tired as hell from the how-many-ever-hour drive she had to do yesterday.

Another shuffle from the door had me turning to look and I smiled at my sister’s mini-me.

“Bowie.” I grinned. “You’re up early.”

“Y’all talk really loud,” he explained.

I chuckled and moved over more so that he could squeeze into the spot left by Danyetta and Lolo.

He snuggled deep, then surprised me by leaning on me and my arm around Lolo rather than Danyetta.

I lifted my hand and placed it around the boy’s shoulders.

I hated that I missed out on so much of his life, too.

“I see that Tex got to make his rounds after all,” Bowie surmised.

I looked up to find a pig ear in Tex’s mouth.

“That’s why he’s so fat, isn’t it?” I asked curiously.

“That’s why he’s so fat,” all three of them confirmed at the same time.

I threw my head back and laughed.

It was only after the kids were back inside, getting ready for school, that I looked over at my baby sister.

“How are you really doing, sis?” I asked.

She sighed. “I’m making it. It would be really nice if I had help at the restaurant, though.”

She batted her eyelashes at me for added effect.

I snorted. “You know that I won’t. I hate going over there. It’s loud and obnoxious, and your food, though to die for, tears my stomach up.”

Or, it had years ago.

Fried anything was really confusing for my stomach after having my gall bladder out fifteen years ago.

And, sadly, DJ’s didn’t have a goddamn thing on their menu that wasn’t fried in some way.

Perfect for vacation goers. Not so good for people that lived here and had to try to maintain a somewhat healthy lifestyle.

“Hey, speaking of,” I said, completely changing the subject. “Do you know a girl named Dutch Panchek?”

My sister blinked. “It sounds familiar. Why?”

I licked my lips.

Then shrugged, going for it.

“Feel her out for me,” I said as I lifted my body off the porch step and turned to look at her. “If you feel like she’s sincere I want you to bring her here. I want to see her.”

“Some chick is not going to want to come see you just because you look cute.” My sister groaned.

Me looking cute had nothing to do with why I was bringing her over.

Her wanting to know how to kill a man, and me giving her the information, had everything to do with it.

Yet, my sister didn’t need to know that detail.

“If you do this for me, I’ll help you find someone at work. Someone you can actually trust to leave it with them for more than a few hours,” I offered.

She was up and off the porch steps so fast that I blinked.

“You promise?”

Okay, so she really needed help.

“I promise,” I said. “I’ll start looking now. Got a buddy of mine that does a little side work with cyber space to do some digging. We’ll find you someone.”

She wrapped her arms around me. “Thanks, Wake.”

I hugged her back tightly, said my goodbyes to the kids as they got on the bus a few minutes later, and then walked back home with a dog that not only had one pig ear, but two.

I sort of felt bad for taking the second one away from him.

CHAPTER 8

Don’t believe everything you think.

-Dutch’s life lessons

DUTCH

Months later

“I hate when you act like you’re too good for McDonald’s,” I snarled. “Your self-righteous ‘I care about what goes into my body’ act is a fuckin’ joke. You forget. I see the men that you used to date. You most certainly don’t care about ‘what goes into your body.’”

My mother’s mouth fell open, and for the first time in my life, I saw Mary Lou Carpenter speechless.

What, she thought she could come here, spout that bullshit, and I’d just take it?

I think the fuck not.

“I need a job,” Mary Lou ground out. “And you have a business that’s short, not just a secretary, but a second doctor. You can give me one!”

I was already shaking my head.

No, the hell, I couldn’t.

I could not, and would not, give her a job.

Over my dead and rotting body.

“Sorry, but no.” I shook my head. “You make me crazy, and that would be quite the opposite of what the men and women that come into this clinic need from me.”

The woman that liked to only call herself my mother when it was convenient, narrowed her eyes as if she was about to curl her fingers into a fist and send it sailing at my face.

But then a nice voice said, “Um, excuse me?”

I turned to find a cute little blonde standing at the door to the RV that I was currently using as my office.

I hadn’t even heard her come up.

Nice.

“Can I help you?” my mother snarled, not liking being surprised by the sudden appearance of the gorgeous woman.

“No.” The blonde shrugged. “I’m here to see my friend, Dutch. We were supposed to go out to lunch.”

My mother blinked. “Your friend? Dutch doesn’t have any friends.”

Sadly, she was right.

My friends always seemed to disappear.

The one person I’d tried to befriend lately had gotten bombed in my own office.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Dory, my one-time coworker and friend, had been bombed in my office.

That’d been two months ago, and she was healing back home in Texas.

However, not only was I now friendless again, but I was also in the process of building again. As well as making sure that I had my patients taken care of out of an RV that sat on the edge of my singed parking lot.

Long story short, Dory started to work for my practice fresh out of school. Over the next few months, she’d somehow acquired a very deadly stalker. And that stalker didn’t like the fact that Dory was ‘ignoring’ him. So, he’d blown her up.

Or tried to.

Dory’s bodyguard had saved her just in the nick of time.

The same couldn’t be said for my building.

I liked to remind myself that I was lucky that I hadn’t been in the building at the time, but sometimes, it was hard to see the positive in the business.

That situation had been the deciding factor for my receptionist to leave as well. She’d been on the verge of retirement anyway, and that had tipped her over into ‘I’m done working’ territory.

Leaving me in the ultimate lurch because I really needed some help big time.

I was desperate. But not desperate enough to have my mother work for me, that was.

Now, the blonde who was trying to help me?

I might very well take her up on the offer, at least until I could get my mom to leave.

Then I’d have to figure out why the hell she was there.

“I can see when I’m not wanted.” My mother stood up in a rush. “If you change your mind, you’ll have to come crawling back to me.”

I would rather drag my teeth against the concrete than do that.

But she didn’t need to know that.

It was a few seconds after my mother left that I looked at the blonde more closely.

There was something about her that was familiar.

When she spoke next, I knew why.

“Sorry for the little white lie. I’m Wake Westfield’s sister, Danyetta.”

I blinked owlishly at her for a few seconds before adrenaline kicked in, and I started to inwardly freak out.

What was she doing here?

Why would she be here now?

Did she know what I did?

It’d taken me months, but I finally got everything into place.

I also got vengeance for a little girl that couldn’t get it on her own anymore.

But what were the odds that she’d come around saying Wake’s name literally the day after I murdered a guy?

I felt my heart start to pound, and sweat start to bead on the top of my forehead.

“I don’t know why you’re freaking out right now,” she said quietly. “But I swear, he’s not going to hurt you. He’s a good guy. He did bad things, yes, but he did those bad things to very bad people.”

I swallowed hard, realizing that I was freaking out over nothing.

Don’t freak out until there’s something to freak out about.

That’d been my mantra for the last two nights.

I hadn’t gotten a lick of sleep since I’d made the final move, and that was starting to play havoc on my psyche.

“I know he’s a good man,” I told her. “I’m just slightly stressed about the fact that my mom was here, and I didn’t want her to be. Not to mention I have patients all over the place today, and no one to help me handle them.”

She blinked. Then smiled.

“My brother is really good at finding people to work where people need them,” she offered. “How do you feel about felons working in your place of business, though?”

I thought about her question for a second then said, “I guess it depends on what type of felon.”

There were types, though, right?

I mean, there were some that were in there for doing really bad things to good people. Then there were the people like Wake. And now me.

“You used to have a bodyguard here for Dory. Kyle Davis. He was a felon,” Danyetta said.

“He was bodyguarding another doctor that used to work here.” Then I narrowed my eyes. “Why?”

KD—what Dory called him anyway—was nice. He was also very watchful when I was around.

Did Wake and KD know each other?

I mean, they were both really fresh out of prison.

They could’ve met each other on the inside… right?

Had I been so focused inwardly on getting rid of Senator Haskins that I hadn’t noticed I had someone watching me all this time?

From what I knew, and had heard around town, Wake Westfield had been out of prison for months. Six of them at least. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, talked about him as if he was one of two things.

A fallen angel sent to earth to protect our children, or a total miscreant that deserved to be burned in a boiling vat of lava for his sins.

There was no in-between.

“You know why he was bodyguarding her.” Danyetta shrugged. “I think that Wake has a really big heart, and he can’t stand to see one that he’s taken in as his own hurt.”

Wow. Was I that much detached from Dory’s goings-on that I hadn’t realized she was close to Wake?

I shivered at the thought of being that clueless.

What else had he seen? Figured out?

What if he knew?

A cold feeling went down my spine.

Luckily, or unluckily depending on how you looked at it, I had another patient walk through the door.

“I need to go.” I smiled fakely at Danyetta.

We could both tell it wasn’t a real smile.

“He can help,” she promised.

“Who can help?” the young boy asked.

Pedro was a thirteen-year-old drop-out whose grandmother was now trying to tame after his mother and father passed away.

I looked at Danyetta, smiled, then turned to Pedro.

“Pedro.” I smiled as I looked at him. “You’re all by yourself today?”

He shrugged as if he didn’t care that he was by himself when we both knew he did.

“Grammy had to go back to work. She wasn’t finished and her boss said he would fire her if she left for more than five minutes,” Pedro explained. “Grammy’s been gone ten. She had to pick me up from school. Last time, he docked her pay by thirty dollars, that’s three hours. We had to eat ramen all week because of the asshole.”

I fisted my hands.

When I looked over, it was to find Danyetta looking at the two of us.

“Where does your grandmother work?” Danyetta asked carefully.

Pedro clammed up tighter than a pickle jar that’d never been opened.

“His grandmother works at the diner at the corner of Main and Fourth,” I answered. “Danyetta, meet Pedro. Pedro, meet our temporary help for the day. You know how I’ve been looking for help, right? This is just a friend.”

Pedro instantly calmed down.

He did not like being questioned by anyone he couldn’t vet.

And, as I was vetted by a few hard-won sessions with him, he could trust her via me. The real reason I’d ‘vetted’ her was because I didn’t want to lose any speed. I wanted him to open up to me this session. And to do that, he had to be comfortable with his surroundings.

Even though I didn’t ‘trust her,’ trust her, I could see the determination in her eyes. As if she was about to go read the guy the riot act.

Well, good for her.

“Pedro.” I smiled. “Let’s go get that session started since your grandmother had to try to get here and sacrifice so much.”

Pedro looked at me skeptically, then shrugged.

With a look toward Danyetta, I went into my RV’s gutted living room that I had revamped as an office and sat down.

I didn’t shut the door.

Shutting the door added an intimacy that I wasn’t sure Pedro could deal with.

Usually, with his grandmother here, that would be okay.

But Pedro didn’t do well without another adult that he trusted. And though I would like him to trust me, he didn’t trust me that well yet.

Danyetta left, leaving the door wide open like it’d been when she got there.

And I relaxed.

Well, I shouldn’t have.

Because Pedro finally allowed me in.

“Were you scared of your office worker?” Pedro asked. “You looked scared of her.”

I shook my head. “I wasn’t, no. I was more worried about something else that she said, rather than her. My mind went somewhere completely different. That happens sometimes, though.”

“It does.” His face closed down for a few seconds. “If I tell you something, you have to promise not to share it with anyone. No one can ever know.”

I blinked, surprised.

“I guess that really depends on what you tell me,” I told him honestly. “If it’s your safety that’s a concern, then I’ll be talking to whomever I need to to ensure that you’re safe no matter what.”

He looked away. “I… it’s a girl at school.”

I frowned. “What’s a girl at school?” I asked.

“A teacher,” he corrected.

“A teacher at school is doing something bad?” I asked for clarification.

He looked down at his hands. “I… she does things… yes.” He took a deep breath. “She corners me. Asks me things…”

Who knew that Pedro seeing me scared could cause him to finally let me in?

Who knew that I would find a second person that deserved to be taken care of, all because of Wake?

Who. Fucking. Knew?

CHAPTER 9

Success is like being pregnant. Everyone says congratulations, but they have no idea how many times you got fucked.

-Wake’s secret thoughts

WAKE

“You’re doing what?” I asked in confusion.

“I’m going to kick that old diner owner’s ass,” Danyetta seethed, her hands clenching and unclenching. “You remember how he used to treat me when I worked there? Well, now he’s doing it to an old lady that’s taking care of her thirteen-year-old grandson by herself. I just know it’s Martha.”

Martha Watson had been at that diner since the beginning of time.

She used to work there when I worked there once upon a time, too.

There was no way that she was still there.

“Where did you get this information from?” I asked carefully.

Dan licked her lips, then said, “I finally talked to her.”

Her being Dutch.

Things had gone a bit haywire over the past few months, and for the first time in a while, I was able to get a little time to myself.

Well, that was if you didn’t count the sheriff that was downright bothering the absolute shit out of me.

He’d taken it upon himself to make me the prime target to help him win his campaign for sheriff.

As in, find something to send me back to jail, so he could toot his horn to his constituents that he’d taken down a hardened criminal.

Well, that had won him his office a few elections ago, but it’d become abundantly clear over the last year or so that he was no longer up for the job.

There was nothing quite like you making a call about a burglar being in your house and the sheriff not responding until you’d already shot the burglar.

Generally, people liked to hold off on shooting people if they could help it. And by calling the sheriff, that’s what they’re hoping that they can do. But as of last night, there’d been eight burglaries gone bad in Sheriff Graydon’s area over the last few months—lawlessness was starting to take root—and people were losing patience.

People, as in nearly every single supporter that Graydon once had, were now highly unlikely to ever vote for him again.

“And how did that go?” I asked curiously.

I’d been watching her since I’d gotten out. I’d hoped that she would come to me, but she hadn’t.

And last night, I’d known that she’d finally done the deed.

Mostly because I’d watched over her while she’d done it.

Following her all the way to Texas hadn’t been in my plans over the last few days, but it’d definitely been the highlight of my year to watch her fumble her way through killing someone.

That probably sounded completely morbid, but Jesus Christ had it been a turn-on to see her take that man out while those filthy words had spewed from his mouth.

I hadn’t thought she could handle it at first. But the senator had signed his own death warrant by telling Dutch how much he enjoyed hurting his daughter, Lois. He’d also confessed to helping his wife murder herself by switching out her medication.

Needless to say, had Dutch not been able to finish the job, I sure the fuck would have.

I’d also taken care of the tracking device on Haskins’s briefcase while Dutch was in a truck stop getting a bathroom break on her way back home.

Which worked well, in my opinion, because Haskins appeared to have driven to the area on his own and just disappeared.

Dutch had chosen a great place to stop, so old that it didn’t have cameras or the best clientele. Nobody would remember her being there, and there wouldn’t be any proof because she didn’t stop to get gas or anything.

Hell, she’d even thought ahead and filled up gas cans so she didn’t have to stop anywhere at all to purchase a single thing.

I liked the way her mind worked, that was for sure.

“Not great.” Danyetta winced. “She was freaked way the hell out about something. The moment I mentioned your name, she got this big ‘uh oh’ look on her face.”

I smiled. “Good.”

Dan rolled her eyes. “You’re absolutely annoying when you’re smug like that. Scaring women isn’t a good thing, bro.”

“I’m not scaring her,” I lied. “I’m just glad that I make her uncomfortable. Comfort kills.”

She rolled her eyes as she eyed the man that was now walking up my front walk.

“What’s he doing here?” she hissed, grabbing her things as she all but threw her jacket on inside out.

“He’s here because I need help,” I explained. “Why?”

‘He’ was actually Aodhan. Her ex/baby daddy/lover of all things Danyetta.

“Yeti,” Aodhan said as he opened my front door without knocking. “What are you doing here?”

“Leaving,” she answered as she all but pushed past him. “Bye.”

My lips quirked up as she left in a flurry, and I looked over at my brother-in-law.

“When are you going to fix that?” I asked curiously.

Danyetta and Aodhan had married several years ago when they’d found out about Bowie.

At first, they’d hidden their relationship from me, as they had when they’d first met, too. Then Bowie had been conceived, and they’d had to come clean with their relationship.

Aodhan being my best friend was supposed to mean he stayed away from my little sister.

Apparently, that was something that he couldn’t do—then, or now.

When Bowie was born, a nurse had tried to switch Bowie with another at birth, and in his haste to find out why and fix the ‘mistake’ that the nurse had made, Aodhan had killed her.

Shit had gone from fucked up to really fucked up, and shortly after, Aodhan was convicted of manslaughter, and was sentenced to ten years in prison for his ‘misdeed.’

Even though it’d taken them nearly three years to convict him due to all the appeals that our lawyer had tried.

And since I was in jail myself, I didn’t really know all that much of what went on with the two of them.

But when I’d been sentenced, Danyetta and Aodhan had been on the verge of perfect family bliss.

Now, it was as if they both hated each other, and I didn’t know why.

From the looks of it, I might never know, either.

Aodhan was a good dad and was there whenever he could be, but he and Dan were constantly at odds.

“Whenever she lets me,” Aodhan said. “What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

I leaned back in my chair and started to tell him my thoughts on Sheriff Graydon. What I thought we needed to do to fix that.

“We need to find someone that can blow him out of the water,” I decided. “And since everyone I know and or like are felons, we need to expand our search. You have any suggestions?”

“What about a woman?” he asked curiously. “Maybe that’s the exact shakeup this town needs. Fresh blood. And a vagina.”

I snorted out a laugh, but my eyes went to the front windows where I could now see someone pulling up in front of my house.

My smile grew.

“Why do you… oh.” Aodhan turned to look at the woman now marching up the length of my driveway. “You know her?”

“Not well,” I said. “You get on that vagina thing. Meanwhile, I’ll deal with this.”

Aodhan opened the door and stepped out just in time for Dutch to make it to my front door with her forward march.

“I don’t think you can deal with this,” Aodhan remarked as he gave Dutch a wide berth, then started back down the length of my walkway to his bike.

Dutch turned and watched him go, waiting until he was all the way out of sight before she turned back to me with a scowl.

“This is not funny,” she snapped.

CHAPTER 10

If at first you don’t succeed, it’s only ‘attempted’ murder.

-Wake to Dutch

DUTCH

“This is not funny,” I snapped.

His smirk deepened into a full-fledged smile.

“What’s not funny, darlin’?” he rumbled, sounding like sex and sin and everything I shouldn’t want but did.

You know how you wake up in the middle of the night, and you crave chocolate cake, and you got some from the restaurant that you didn’t finish, so you brought it home? How you wake up and can only think about that cake? But you try to stop yourself, because you’re a faster, and you’re not supposed to eat for another seven and a half hours, and cake was never really supposed to be on the menu anyway. However, all you can think about is that chocolate cake, and how good it will taste, and fuck it. You’ll just have a little bite, and then end up eating the whole thing?

Then you go to bed afterward, hating yourself for being so weak.

That’s exactly what Wake Westfield was to me.

A piece of decadent chocolate cake that I know damn and good well I shouldn’t taste. Yet, he was all I wanted. All I could think about. All I wanted to devour until there wasn’t a single stray piece of him left.

I just knew he’d go straight to my hips, too.

Oh, god.

I wanted him more than I could ever imagine wanting a person.

I’d done nothing but think about him non-stop since I’d seen him in a prison all those many months ago.

Then he’d moved back home, and all I heard was ‘Wake, Wake, Wake.’

I saw him around town. I saw him running. I saw him riding his motorcycle.

And holy God, how the hell could he get hotter just by being on the back of a bike?

I didn’t know, but the man sure as hell did.

In the time that he’d been out of prison, and his friends had trickled into town, he’d formed a motorcycle club full of felons just like him.

The Gator Bait MC.

In the short time that they’d been in Accident, Florida with permanence, they’d formed a very tight bond with the community.

Though, that had a lot to do with the failure of a sheriff we had.

The town of Accident loved that the lawlessness was coming to an end upon their appearance.

Though it was never truly said blatantly in writing, Gator Bait MC was patrolling the town, making it safe, when Sheriff Graydon couldn’t be bothered.

Word was spreading like wildfire, too.

It wouldn’t be long until Graydon was gone.

Which was good, because I thought he was a piece of shit.

Especially after what I’d learned today from my research.

The teacher that had been making Pedro uncomfortable at school happened to be Graydon’s sister.

Wasn’t that just convenient?

“Why do you want anything to do with me?” I finally asked the smirking man.

God, did I mention he was sexy?

He was wearing a pair of running shorts, a white T-shirt that was practically see-through with sweat, a plain black ball cap, and a pair of tennis shoes.

Nothing special, yet he made my nether region practically sing for him.

“You’re the one that dragged me into your life,” he said. “Who am I to tell my protégé that I can’t have anything to do with them?”

“I’m not your protégé,” I hissed.

His brows rose. “Last night would say differently.”

I opened and closed my mouth, my voice freezing halfway out of my throat, as I realized that he knew everything.

“We should probably get married,” he teased. “Then I couldn’t incriminate you in the court of law.”

I blinked.

“You know, the spousal law? A person has the privilege to refuse to disclose and to prevent any other person from disclosing confidential communication made to the person’s spouse while they were married. This privilege survives termination of the marriage.” He recited the words as if he was saying them straight from a textbook.

I shook my head as if that would help clear it of the confusion.

It didn’t work.

“We can’t get married,” I told him bluntly. “I wouldn’t survive that marriage.”

His eyes lit with an inner fire that I had a feeling didn’t spell out good things for me.

Luckily, just before he could say anything more, a car pulled up behind us, momentarily distracting him.

While he studied whoever had broken into our strange trance, I studied him.

Today, the scruff on his face was less beard, more five o’clock shadow.

I could even make a little indent in his chin. What my friend from high school used to call the ‘do me, daddy’ dimple.

Wake definitely worked that dimple well.

And his hair, which had been long while in prison, was surprisingly non-existent under that hat of his.

And my god.

That hat.

I’d never been one to really like a guy in a ball cap, but Wake wore that cap so well that I didn’t even care that I could barely see his eyes. Or maybe it was the fact that he could see my eyes, but I couldn’t see his.

The hiding of his eyes kind of made him more sinister looking, too.

If I saw him walking on the side of the road, I most certainly wouldn’t go anywhere near him. Even if he was wearing that smile he was currently wearing.

The problem with Wake was that he was understandable. He was the type of villain that literally scared the absolute shit out of you, because you knew that under the right circumstances, you could end up exactly like him.

Which, sadly, was the case for me.

I’d done the exact same thing as Wake, and now I was a murderer just like him.

Did I know that I did wrong? Hell yes.

Did I regret that? Hell no.

Did I plan on changing a thing? Also, no.

I’d read a book once that had a quote in it that really resonated with me over the last few years. “The scariest types of monsters are the ones that are human and relatable.”

“Sheriff Graydon,” Wake drawled, voice like honey. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

I turned slowly, my heart pounding a mile a minute, as I stared at the sheriff with wild eyes.

What was he doing here? Was he here for me? Holy shit, it hadn’t even been twenty-four hours yet!

Wake chose to use our proximity to throw his arm around my shoulder, and I had to fight a different sort of anxiety.

This time, at the way his body felt pressed to mine, and the way his smell seemed to permeate all of my senses.

“Where were you last night from the hours of eight in the evening to eleven?” Sheriff Graydon asked smugly.

That’s when I knew I was about to be drug into this with Wake. I all but felt the thought spark into his brain, then he was pulling me in tighter to his body, his hold becoming more of a ‘hold’ and less of a ‘help.’ Which was what he was doing. He’d seen my silent freak out at the appearance of the sheriff, and he’d been trying to calm me down so I didn’t do or say something that might tip the man off.

“I was with her.” Wake grinned wickedly. “We were on a road trip.”

I cursed inwardly but luckily had years and years of practice to conceal my emotions.

Wake Westfield knew about last night.

Had he been serious about me marrying him?

God. Dammit.

I knew Wake Westfield was trouble.

CHAPTER 11

What do you call two crows sitting on a park bench? Attempted murder.

-Wake to Dutch

WAKE

I could all but feel the way she tensed up completely at my side.

Not in a way that her appearance changed, but definitely in the way her muscles felt underneath my arm and against my left side.

Her hand snuck underneath the fabric of my shirt. Then she pinched me on the love handle. Hard.

I didn’t react, but my heart practically sang.

I loved that she wasn’t going to roll over and die.

That she was going to roll with this.

Even if she rolled and clawed at me the entire way.

I couldn’t fuckin’ wait.

“You were… what?” Sheriff Graydon hadn’t been expecting that.

My usual MO was me hanging out by myself because I didn’t have a job, friends, or a life, for that matter.

The last ten times he’d come out here, I’d been alone. I’d had to show him my security cam footage of me being on the property for him to leave me alone.

Though Dutch didn’t need to know that. All she needed to know was that I needed an alibi, and she was going to be it.

Tit for tat, after all.

She squirmed underneath my arm, and I knew that she was pissed as hell.

“Why were you contacting me?” I asked curiously. “Something happen?”

Sheriff Graydon looked offended that I spoke to him at all.

God, the man was annoying as hell.

I couldn’t wait until we found someone to run against him, and replace his old, stubborn, making shit up, ass.

“There was a disappearance,” he said.

I blinked. “A what?”

“A disappearance,” he repeated.

I blinked again. “Okay… and you felt that I was complicit in this disappearance because?”

“Because,” he hesitated. “It was once alleged that he was involved in assaulting his child.” He spoke rapidly. “Even though he didn’t do it.”

“Well, who is this person?” I asked. “And sorry, but I really was with her last night. We were riding around the Bay roads. Went to my sister’s place. There’s camera footage if you want to see it.”

Of me.

I had actually gone out last night after I’d gotten home from watching Dutch.

I’d driven out to my sister’s restaurant, DJ’s, and helped out with a burst pipe that’d occurred in the middle of the night. I’d been there for over four hours.

“Of course, you have an alibi and camera footage.” Graydon almost sounded petulant as he spoke. “Didn’t think you’d stoop so low as to bring an actual good person into your den of sin, though.”

Dutch stiffened. “I’m sorry, but what, exactly, are you still doing here if you’ve received his alibi, and know that he wasn’t wherever you must’ve wanted him to be…”

“Texas,” Graydon said. “The senator disappeared from Texas.”

I all but clamped my arm around Dutch’s shoulder to keep her exactly where she was.

What were the fuckin’ odds?

“Certainly didn’t have time to go to Texas,” I lied. After I’d gotten home from watching over Dutch, I’d then spent the night at DJ’s so Dan could keep the kids at home and in bed. I’d only gotten home an hour and a half ago, actually. Where I’d then gone on a run. Which I had proof of, too, thanks to the new fancy watch that my sister had bought me for a birthday gift last week.

“I’ll get you for something, Westfield. And when I do, you’ll go down for life this time,” Graydon promised.

That’s when Dutch snapped out of her stupor.

“I think that’s a threat.” Dutch looked at him with anger in her eyes. Goddamn, she was sexy as hell.

Today, she was wearing a black skirt, a black T-shirt, and black tennis shoes.

I was really digging the all-black thing.

Not only did it look sexy as hell on her curvy frame, but it also seemed to highlight her shock of red hair.

The red hair that was slowly slipping from the ponytail that was haphazardly put up at the back of her nape.

“Are you even listening to me, Westfield?”

I blinked, surprised to see Sheriff Graydon walking away, and Dutch’s head turned so that she could glare daggers at me.

“I’m sorry.” I shrugged. “I tend to ignore everything he says so that I can keep myself off of blood pressure medicine.” I paused. “I am thirty-eight after all.”

She made a frustrated sound that had me laughing and curling my arm around her so that she would have no choice but to follow me into my house.

When we got inside and I had the door closed and locked, she sighed.

“I don’t know how you’re calm right now,” she grumbled darkly as she kicked her toe against the carpet. “This is bad, Wake. Really, really bad.”

I shrugged. “He was just reaching. He’s come at me with four different murders and six different disappearances since I’ve been out of prison. All of them happened at least half the country away from here. He’s just being annoying. Though, it was a very weird coincidence that he asked me about that one with you here.”

“But…” She swallowed hard. “What if they find out? What if they trace it back to me? What if they go to my house and see that I missed a single hair?”

“They would have to have a reason to go to your house,” I pointed out. “And they don’t have one. There are plenty of other people that man pissed off. You’re nothing special, darlin’.”

She continued to freak out. Up until I said what I said next.

“Until further notice, you’re staying here. With me,” I growled. “Let’s go home and get some of your things.”

She blinked owlishly at me. “I, uh, can’t stay here.”

I tilted my head. “Why?”

“Other than the whole ‘I don’t know you’ thing?” she asked.

I gave her an eyebrow raise as I waited expectantly for her to explain.

“I have pets,” she said. “They need me every morning.”

“Pets like horses?” I asked.

“No…” she drawled out.

“Pets that can’t travel?” I asked.

“They can travel.” She frowned. “But I doubt you’ll want them in your house. Not to mention that it’s totally weird for me to just move in here.”

“Look,” I said, “I don’t have a phobia of any type of pets.”

She started to pace. “But that’s not really my problem. I think I need to murder someone else!”

Her words had me stilling. “What?”

“There’s this boy,” she whispered. “And he goes to a school where Sheriff Graydon’s sister works. A sister that treats him inappropriately. He’s been acting out for a year now. His grandmother can’t handle his outbursts anymore. And today, we had a breakthrough. He told me that Ms. Graydon made him talk about stuff that makes him uncomfortable… so that he can pass his tests and make good grades.”

Anger clawed at my guts.

But there was one thing that I’d learned while in prison.

Patience.

Before, when I’d learned of all the pedophiles that were surrounding me and my daughter, I’d gone off. I’d done a lot of things in haste, taken people out when I should’ve made them pay. Pay for a hell of a lot longer than they’d had to.

“You can’t go around murdering every person that pisses you off,” I finally said. “And as much as I’d like to help you in this act, you’re going to have to…”

“She scared him! Terrified him in no way that a child should ever be terrified of an adult.”

I caught her up in my arms before she could make the next pass of my living room.

“We can fix this without violence,” I told her. “But you can’t go killing off the sheriff’s sister. That’s the fastest way to get the entire state of Florida on your ass.”

She looked up at me with those blue eyes that were so big and scared, I couldn’t help myself.

I dropped my mouth to kiss hers.

CHAPTER 12

Nice dinners don’t impress me. Going out to breakfast in sweats and having you tell me I’m cute while I shove a short stack of pancakes in my mouth impresses me.

-Dutch to Wake

DUTCH

One second, I was ready to take on Sheriff Graydon and his sister—seeing him had brought it all back—everything that Pedro had told me today.

And the next, I was in Wake’s arms, kissing him, and I liked it.

I’d never been a big ‘kisser’ in the world of dating. Swapping spit, clicking teeth, and rubbing tongues had never really appealed to me.

I’d rather lick a popsicle than kiss a boy.

But obviously, I’d never kissed Wake before.

Now, I realized my mistake.

I just had to find someone that tasted as good as a popsicle.

And Wake definitely tasted better than a popsicle. Maybe even a Fudgesicle.

He pulled back, his eyes going to my mouth first, then flicking upward to meet my gaze before he said, “You done?”

That’s when I realized he’d kissed me to shut me up.

I immediately went up in arms, my hands flying up in an ‘I can’t believe this’ gesture. His eyes took that movement in, then my open mouth to let words fly at him like bullets, and he moved back in.

This time, the kiss made the one before it look tame.

When he pulled back long seconds later, I was breathless and forgot that I was mad.

Why?

Because Wake Westfield had a kiss that was so dangerous, I knew that with only two, I’d be addicted to him forever.

“Kissing you isn’t gross,” I blurted before he could say something stupid like ‘you done’ again.

He grinned, then reached backward, tugged the collar of his shirt, and pulled it straight up and over his head in one smooth, effortless move.

You know the way that guys did that? I’d always thought it was so impressive. I mean, the man just effectively pulled his shirt over his head faster than it took me to take it off inside out and backward.

Then, for added effect, he’d thrown that shirt on the ground and had me up in his arms again before I could blink.

He stepped over his chunky Golden Retriever, who was laid out on the floor panting with his tongue hanging out, and started toward the stairs.

Seconds later, he was scaling them like I didn’t almost weigh two hundred pounds—and I did. I’d gotten on the scale this morning. I’d also silently judged myself, deemed myself lacking, and promised myself by this summer, I would have a banging bikini body. Which my inner, rational self knew was impossible, seeing as it was now May, and bikini season in Florida was practically in full effect.

“Why is it when you think so hard, I can practically see your brain ticking?” Wake asked as he shouldered open a door, walked straight to the bed, and dropped me onto it.

I gasped as I bounced a few times, then fell backward onto the bed in a rush.

“Uhhh.” I looked around. “We’re in your bedroom.”

And I was on his bed.

Holy shit, it smelled like him.

All spicy and manly and rawr.

“I’m about to fuck you, that’s why we’re in my bedroom,” he said. “Then, when I’m done, we’re going to go get something to eat because I’m starving after my run. Then we’re gonna come back here, let Tex out, then go back to my sister’s place so I can give my kid a hug.”

I blinked. “You have a kid?”

Why did I just ask that? I knew he had a freakin’ kid!

“Out of everything I just told you we were doing, that’s the only thing that you got out of it?” he asked.

Oh, I’d heard it all.

In fact, my mind was still trying to grasp on to the fact that he wanted me to have sex with him. Me, the curvy, nearly two-hundred-pound girl that hates herself every time she looks in a mirror.

Was he broken?

“The kid thing seems pretty important.” I looked around, feigning my ignorance. I damn well knew he had a kid. There was no way I could forget about that when he’d been so sweet about seeing her photos while I was asking him to tell me how to kill someone. Plus, I remembered every single second of our encounter, and had thought about him all the time since I’d seen him last. “I mean, technically, I feel like they should at least have some sign of life in your house?”

He grinned and grasped the string on his shorts, releasing the knot that was there holding them up.

“She doesn’t live with me. She lives with my sister,” he explained. “And as much as I’d love to have her here, she’s happy where she’s at. And I love her, so I’ll deal with not having her here if that’s what she wants. Plus, she’s almost sixteen now, and god forbid we disrupt her perfect teenage life in any way, shape, or form. Plus, I’m not dumb. I know you remembered that I had one.”

I grinned at that.

He sounded kind of put out that he didn’t have that type of relationship with his kid.

But that meant he was a good dad.

He had to have gotten out and wanted her there, but hadn’t gotten to have her because he didn’t want to mess up her routine.

“That’s good, in a vague sense, that you gave her that,” I said. “Most parents wouldn’t have.” Then blurted, “You don’t look like a dad.”

My eyes were taking in his entire body.

The way his pants now sagged on his trim hips.

The way he had tattoos on that very impressive chest that were downright screaming for me to run my tongue along the swirling lines.

“Years of nothing but eating a balanced diet and exercising will give you this.” He shrugged, letting his pants drop.

That’s when I realized that he wasn’t wearing any underwear.

“You don’t have any underwear on,” I said, eyeing the cock that was now in full view of my gaze.

Okay, so I’d thought he was sexy before.

But now, with the way his cock was a few feet away from me, and I was about to get to touch it?

He was definitely sexier now.

“I’ve had four sexual partners in my life,” I said, eyeing the beast in front of me. “None of which have had a penis the size of yours. I’m fairly sure that’s gonna rip me in two.”

He chuckled, toed off his running shoes, pulled off his socks, and then took his hat off.

All of it went to the floor around the bed.

“Take off your clothes.”

I didn’t. Couldn’t.

He helped me do it, and not once as his eyes raked over the flesh he was baring, did he say, do, or even act like he was disgusted with how I looked.

In fact, the more skin I exposed, the more his eyes heated.

Warm melted chocolate—that’s how I would describe his eyes at that moment.

They were so focused on me, on my breasts and my thighs, the way my hips flared out, that I didn’t have time to be self-conscious. Not with the way he was practically eating me alive, one heated sweep of his gaze at a time.

I forgot to be nervous. I forgot to cover my stomach and my old stretch marks. I forgot that I was supposed to care about how my boobs sagged a little more now than they used to.

I even forgot my name.

That was until he swept me up into his arms and practically growled it in my face.

“Dutch,” he snapped.

I blinked, my nipples pebbling at the heat and desire in that one word coming out of his mouth.

So harsh yet so soft and melty at the same time.

“Y-yeah?” I asked, trying not to rub against him like a cat as I did.

It was a lost cause.

I loved the way his chest hair was rubbing against my distended nipples.

How his hard abs felt so good pressed against my soft belly.

How his cock felt nestled against the apex of my thighs. Not quite touching anything good, yet the promise of him being so close making me more than a little hot with anticipation.

“Do you want this?” he asked. “Because in about two seconds, everything you say or do is about to be irrelevant. I’m going to take you so hard that you’ll be spouting word soup.”

I blinked, a tiny frisson of pleasure snaked through me at the thought of him taking me so hard that I couldn’t speak in coherent sentences. “You wouldn’t stop if I told you to stop mid-way?”

He chuckled against my skin, his stubbled cheek running up and down my throat as if he whispered.

“I would.” He hesitated. “But all the ‘nos’ and ‘stops’ in the world wouldn’t register past a certain point. You’d have to really mean the ‘no’ for me to actually stop. Sometimes, people don’t know the difference between pleasure and pain, and their body tricks them into thinking they need to say stop, when in reality, they need more.”

I thought about his words for a moment. “What about a safe word? What about…”

“Safe words,” he mused, “are weird. I’m not going to not listen to you. You mean that ‘no’ or ‘stop’ and I’ll stop. But you better really mean it.”

Then he was stripping me the rest of the way, including taking out my hair tie that was holding my hair in place and then pushing me onto the bed.

He spread my legs wide, then proceeded to drop down at the end of the bed and hook both of his hands around my hips.

Seconds later, I was all but hanging off the end of the bed, reminding me of all the times I’d been at the OB-GYN’s office and the doctor would tell me ‘lower.’

Hell, if they just yanked you to where they wanted you, like Wake had just done, life would be a whole lot less frustrating.

“Jesus,” I breathed when he smoothed his hands up the backs of my thighs, then all but pressed my knees to my chest, baring my pussy and my goddamn soul to his immediate gaze.

“Fuck. Yes,” he rasped. “I’ve wanted to taste this for what feels like forever. Hold your knees wide.”

Then he stopped talking and started licking.

Two slow licks started, one at the bottom of my folds, right above my back entrance, and the other straight down the other side after he looped around my clit.

He didn’t touch anything particularly sensitive, but holy gods, did he rock my damn world with just a few licks.

One, I knew he was going to be damn good with his tongue. Two, I knew that I was about to be ruined for any other man.

He hadn’t even gotten to the good part, and I was already realizing that I was lacking in the sex department.

I’d had four boyfriends before, and three of those I’d had sex with. I’d also had a one-night stand that had been my one and only trip into sex without getting my heart involved.

So I had four people to compare Wake to and knew that I would forever compare him to the rest. They would all never be able to live up, because Wake literally knocked the bar so high that I couldn’t even see it.

His sexy talk. His promise of a good hard fucking. His kisses. His two licks.

His… oh sweet, baby Jesus.

He didn’t waste time after that.

He thrust his fingers in deep, so deep, that I squeaked.

His tongue circled my clit and all but pulled it off my body with the suction from his mouth.

And then he pressed on my lower stomach with the other hand.

All three alone wouldn’t have done it. But all three at the same time?

That was my first orgasm by Wake Westfield.

I screamed his name so loudly that my throat ached.

CHAPTER 13

That moment when someone tells you a secret you already know, but you have to act surprised…

-Text from Dutch to Wake

WAKE

“Holy fuck,” I growled, feeling her pussy ripple for a second time around my fingertips.

I was so hard that I was about to burst.

Having her so close, tasting her, smelling her. It was a perfect storm.

I got off my knees, my cock dragging along the sheets of the bed as I did and crawled between her splayed thighs.

Hooking her around the waist, I dragged her farther up the bed, then pressed my bare cock against her entrance.

She was wet. Smooth. Silky.

“Mine.” I thrust inside of her, one smooth, hard, long stroke that filled her up completely.

Even still, some of my length wasn’t inside of her.

But that would come with time.

That was why I’d opened her up so completely. Why I’d gotten her ready to accept me.

I was big.

Much bigger than I was sure she was used to.

“Holy fuck,” she breathed, echoing my earlier words. “You’re big.”

“You’re small,” I agreed.

“No,” she denied. “I’m above average for a woman in height. I’m over two hundred pounds after a holiday, and just under when I’m being good. I wear a size eleven shoe. I’m fairly sure it has nothing to do with my vagina and everything to do with your penis.”

Her words would’ve made me smile had I not been trying to focus on not coming.

It took me thirty seconds of soft thrusting to realize that no matter what I thought about, I wasn’t going to forget that my dick felt like it was being hugged by a goddamn silk-lined glove. Each contraction and flutter of her pussy had my eyes nearly crossing.

“I really hope that you’ll give me a second chance,” I choked. “Because this is about to be over quick.”

She laughed, and that was enough to send me over the top.

The release that I’d held inside by sheer force of will exploded outward in a spectacular burst that filled her up so completely that it started to leak out the sides.

I cursed and bent my neck, capturing her nipple into my mouth and giving it a harsh suck.

She squeaked, which caused another spectacular contraction of her pussy around my cock, and I realized that despite my age, I was going to need no recovery time.

I cursed as I started to move again, slowly filling her completely full again. Over and over, the smallest thrusts that barely pulled me out of her just to push right back inside.

She arched, and I held on to her nipple with my teeth, just tight enough that she didn’t know which way to go.

The way my cock was filling her told her to go one way, but my hold on her nipple forced her to go another.

“Oh, no,” she whispered. “No, no, no.”

She was twisting her hips this way and that, trying to get me to move where she wanted me.

“God, Wake,” she whispered. “I need more.”

I knew exactly what she needed.

I just didn’t want to give it to her yet.

I’d had women.

Lots of them.

But Dutch was, by far, the best one I’d had.

She was soft and supple, padding my hard planes with soft curves.

Her breasts were perfectly plump, fitting my hands to overflowing.

One was cupping her tit perfectly, framing her nipple so that I could still have access to it with my mouth. The other hand was positioned so that the nipple fit between two of my knuckles.

Just when she tried to arch again, I squeezed that nipple between my knuckles, while the other I pinched with my thumb and forefinger.

She squealed, her body bucking, and then she was falling over the precipice all over again.

Before, I’d thought her coming was the most beautiful thing in the world.

But that was when I was outside of her watching and thinking about how good it would be when I was inside of her. Now that I was actually inside of her, I realized that there wasn’t a single place on the planet better than exactly where I was.

She was coming, and coming hard.

I could feel the added gush of her wetness, and I knew that I would be changing these sheets before the night was done.

Only when her body practically collapsed onto the mattress did I let her breasts go, pull away, and flip her over onto her stomach.

She moaned as her body settled into place, and I couldn’t help but look at her splayed thighs and her juicy ass. I lifted both hands, cupped each fleshy globe of her butt, and squeezed.

Her flesh squished out between my fingers, and my cock practically jumped at the sight.

“Fuck me,” I growled. “God, I can’t wait to fuck this ass.”

She started to laugh, looking at me over her shoulder. “You’re delusional if you think that’s ever going to happen.”

Oh, it would happen.

One day, I’d get in there. And she would fuckin’ like it.

I knew that with zero uncertainty.

“We’ll see,” I mused as I leaned down and bit the top part of her ass. “Get on those knees.”

She wiggled out from between me and the bed, getting on her hands and knees before once again looking at me over her shoulder. Then, with her eyes locked on mine, she went down to her shoulders so that only her ass was high in the air. Just begging for me to use it any way I wanted to.

“Nice.” I smirked.

She bit her lip, and I peeled my gaze away from hers to look at her pussy.

She was wet. Very wet.

Our combined releases were leaking from her, and the swirl of creamy white fluid had my dick once again begging for release.

“Oh, shit,” she whispered when she saw the look on my face. “Wake, I don’t think I can take anymore.”

I took a deep inhalation, then pulled her back so that she was where I wanted her.

“I don’t think you have much of a choice how much more you come, pretty girl,” I informed her. “But I’ll take it into consideration for next time.”

Seconds later, I was once again pressing into her, this time much slower than I’d entered her previously.

But not because I didn’t think she could take it.

Quite the contrary.

I knew she could take it. I just liked to see my dick pushing inside of her, and all that juice inside of her pussy pushing out like a goddamn cream pie bursting at the seams.

I’d never been one of ‘those’ guys. The kinds that came and got off on the way their woman looked with jizz falling out of them. At least, I hadn’t thought that I was one of those guys.

Then Dutch came along with her ample hips, great tits, and an attitude on top of an attitude, and suddenly I was in a whole lot of trouble.

Things that sounded good to me before sounded lackluster now.

And all of a sudden, there I was thinking about how fuckin’ awesome it would be to make this more permanent so I could have her any day all day whenever the fuck I wanted her.

Groaning, I sped up, forcefully taking her until she was crying out with each thrust. Just on the verge of pain. Just a small hint of sweet agony to go with all that pleasure.

Her ass jiggled with the smash of my hips against that sweet, soft flesh.

And I found a new addiction.

Watching her body take me.

Watching as my hard cock tunneled into her soft, feminine folds.

Right then and there, I knew I was lost.

Coming never felt so good.

CHAPTER 14

You would make great fertilizer.

-Dutch’s secret thoughts

DUTCH

Was it possible to die without actually dying?

Because that’s exactly how I felt when Wake had come, then collapsed beside me on the bed.

I was a panting, noodle-legged mess.

I couldn’t catch my breath, and my heart was still hammering.

What the hell was that? What had just happened? Was that what people called an out-of-body experience?

“So we’re decided?”

“What?” I asked, unable to comprehend where he’d just come up with that statement.

“About you living here? Being mine.”

I was trying to chase the sex fog off, but it just wouldn’t leave me.

I literally barely had the energy to turn my head on the bed and look at him.

He was lying on his side, his head propped up on his hand, elbow in the bed. He was naked, but the sheet that was draped over his lower half was covering the important stuff—barely.

He was so fucking sexy.

How was that even allowed?

No wonder people went for bad boys. If they looked anything like Wake, I could definitely see that it would be hard to deny anything.

“Wh-what?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”

“You. Here. Living. With me,” he said the words slowly. As if I was brain damaged or something. “You can move in here with me. I can keep an eye on you. And you can give me a break from the sheriff for a while. He’s been up my ass since I was released and it’s getting really fuckin’ old. While that’s happenin’, I can have my boys look into the chick at the school that’s messing with your kid.”

“Oh.” I hesitated. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? You have a daughter. That’s gonna look really freakin’ weird.”

He shrugged. “Lolo is really smart. I wouldn’t hide it from her. I would be upfront and blunt about everything. I’d also let her know about the teacher at the school. Accident is a small town. The junior high and the high school share the same damn building. There’s no way that she doesn’t have contact with this teacher daily.”

Just the thought of it, I could tell, was really bothering him.

“Come on.” He smacked my ass. “You can come with me to dinner.”

“What?” I squawked. “I can’t go to dinner like this!”

I was covered in his come.

As in, covered.

His. Mine. It was all over me. I could feel it drying on my back.

My god, the things we’d done. I needed a shower, and a soul cleanse while I was at it.

And Jesus, he’d talked about putting his penis in my ass.

That was depraved, too.

I’d never once even thought about anything going into my ass. Not a finger, and definitely never a penis.

Yet… when he’d said it? When he’d mentioned it? I’d definitely thought about it then.

Though the thought was a bit scary, I knew that if he wanted to try it, I would.

“Shower first,” he said. “I’ll braid your hair when you get out so it doesn’t look like a rat’s nest.”

I was being pulled out of the bed in the next second, all but being dragged to his shower.

That’s when I saw the wall of windows that were practically wide ass open for anyone to see in.

I squeaked. “Wait! You can’t just walk out in front of windows naked like this!”

I covered myself the best I could, but there was a lot of me to cover. I accomplished only covering my areolas at best.

“They’re tinted,” he explained, not bothering to shield any of his nudity as he tugged me along. “I can see out just fine. No one can see in. Also acts as some kick-ass sun reflection, too. Saves me about a hundred bucks a month on cooling my place.”

He brought me into his bathroom, and I stared in awe.

Everything inside of it was one huge shower area.

The tile came up all the way to the door, and the shower practically dominated the entire room. Hell, even the vanity and the toilet were part of it.

“Wow,” I said, staring. “How did this come about? I’ve never seen a drain in the middle of a bathroom before.”

He chuckled as he walked over to the shower and turned it on with the press of a button on the wall.

“It all started out when Tex was a baby, and hated being in the shower, but didn’t mind being in the bathroom. He was always getting sandy and gross from being in the water, so it came to my attention that I would need to come up with something a little better to get him in here and showered. Hence the full bathroom/shower area. But now I can have like eight dogs in here.”

“Tex is pretty big…” I hedged.

The dog was huge.

I’d never seen a Golden so big before.

“I take him on walks daily,” he grumbled. “Actually, twice a day. But it’s like that fat is just clinging on for dear life. That, and my sister and daughter and nephew still feed him like a horse. But, I guess if he lives a few less years because he’s fat, at least he’ll be happy. I’ve given up trying. I just try to get him a walk in so he doesn’t get any worse.”

He waited a few more seconds and then tugged me under the showerheads.

Heads.

Plural.

There were eight of them. Two on the one wall, one above our heads, two on each sidewall, and one on each wall lower, about crotch height.

It was heaven.

I groaned as all the water hit me from every side imaginable.

Then Wake’s fingers were in my hair, and I realized that I’d never addressed what he’d said earlier.

“You braid hair?” I asked, keeping my eyes closed as I felt suds from the shampoo start running down my face.

“I braid hair,” he confirmed. “When Lolo was younger, she always wanted her hair braided. So I learned because my ex-wife refused.”

That was the sweetest thing I’d ever heard.

“Ex-wife.” I paused. “I’ve seen her a few times around town. Do y’all get along well? I know that you said your daughter lived with your sister. What happened there?”

He chuckled. “You can’t help it, can you? The psychologist never sleeps?”

I snorted. “I was nosey before I became a psychologist. But since I know that you’ve been spying on me with everyone that you could, I feel like you are one rung up the ladder already while I’m still hanging out on the ground.”

He didn’t answer for a few long seconds before he pulled on my hair and said, “Tilt your head back. Rinse out all this soap.”

I did, and then he was rinsing out the shampoo, using his fingers to make sure every bubble was out before he pulled me and spun me so that I had my head out of the water. “I don’t have any conditioner. You’re just gonna have to deal with shampoo only.”

I looked at his hair.

There wasn’t a lot of it. But there was enough that he needed conditioner.

“Did you just run out?” I asked curiously.

“I don’t use any,” he admitted. “Seems like a waste of money.”

I blinked at him. “Word is around town you’re a millionaire.”

As in, there’s no reason you can’t buy conditioner.

I knew he was rich and all, but you wouldn’t think he was based on how he acted, dressed, and portrayed himself.

He must’ve heard my silent comment because he said, “Millionaires don’t become millionaires by spending money, darlin’.”

I rolled my eyes and reached for the soap.

“You need conditioner, Wake,” I said. “You have a lot of hair for a guy. It’ll feel way better if you have it.”

Then I watched as he washed his own hair with quick, efficient movements.

Soon, he was reaching for the soap that I was finished with, and I got out of the shower after rinsing off and looked around for a towel.

“Umm,” I said. “Where are the towels?”

“That cabinet right there.” He gestured toward a cabinet.

That wasn’t actually a cabinet. It was a warming drawer for the towels.

I groaned as I wrapped one huge, fluffy towel around myself.

“Oh, god,” I said as I snuggled in deep. “This is the best thing ever.”

He grinned at me as he finished up, turned off the shower, and headed toward me.

After grabbing his own warmed towel, he said, “There are a few things in life that I splurge on, and my comfort is definitely one of them.”

I rolled my eyes as I dried off, then went for my discarded clothes.

After dressing—and realizing that I wished I had something more suitable for meeting the daughter of the man I’d just had sex with—I stripped his sheets.

There was no way in hell he was going to sleep in these today.

They needed washing.

“Can you run a load with the sheets?” he asked as he slipped into a pair of shorts that were much shorter than the ones I usually saw him in. “The washer and dryer are through that door.”

I looked where he was pointing. “The washer and dryer are in your room?”

He shrugged. “It’s actually a door that leads you to them, but you can access it through the kitchen as well.”

With that, I started his load of laundry, then went back to see him pulling on a T-shirt that had seen better days.

“That shirt has a hole in it,” I said as I walked up to him and pressed my finger into the hole at his back.

“I know,” he said. “But I’m in desperate need of washing a load of clothes, and this is one of the last ones that I have right now.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well that explains the baby shorts.”

He snorted out a laugh as he gestured to the bed. “Sit down and turn around. Let me have your hair.”

I raised a brow at him but ultimately did as he asked.

It took him five minutes to braid one side of my hair.

And it actually looked really good.

“Wow,” I said as I looked in the mirror. “I never expected you to be able to braid so well with those big fingers of yours.”

“This is all I can do when it comes to girls’ hair,” he said. “So don’t get too excited.”

“It’s more than my own dad could do.” I shrugged. “It was sweet that you learned for her.”

When I looked at him just as I said that, I could read the emotion in his eyes that practically screamed intense love. “I’d do anything for my daughter. Even learn how to braid with my fat fingers.”

“Well, it’s awesome that you did.” I could feel how tight it was, meaning he’d done a really great job at it. Who would’ve known? “What’s your daughter like?”

I was ashamed to say that I’d started following her on social media.

She was a happy, beautiful, little Wake.

I’d never in my life thought that I’d want to hang out with a sixteen-year-old before, but Wake’s daughter was the exception. She looked like she was doing something active every day. She’d take photos of herself walking Tex. Or paddle boarding in the bay. Yesterday she’d posted a photo of her father and her riding bikes up the sea wall.

Though, that reminded me that Wake definitely hadn’t been with his little girl yesterday like my assuming had previously thought.

“She’s like a little firecracker thrust into a bottle of sunshine, shaken up and released on the world right before she blows.” He laughed, tugging my hair slightly. “Sorry.”

“I like it,” I blurted out before I could think better of it.

He paused in braiding my hair, then said carefully, “The hair pulling? Or the fact that my kid is wild?”

I swallowed hard. “That your kid is wild?”

That had come out as a question, and it was more than obvious that my mind hadn’t been at that exact location when I’d said my earlier words.

“Hmm,” he said as he finished up. “We’ll explore hair pulling later. When I have you back in my bed. I want to get over to my sister’s before it looks too suspicious.”

“Suspicious for us to arrive so late? Or suspicious for the sheriff?” I questioned.

He pulled me up by the hand as he led me outside to his bike.

“Aren’t you going to lock your doors?” I asked curiously.

“Tex is here,” he said. “And despite the heftiness of him, he can protect. Plus, there aren’t many people that are going to break into the home of an ex-con.”

I watched curiously as he straddled his bike.

I know that he hadn’t meant it to come out looking sexual at all. It’d been a function for him.

But now I was staring at him with need throbbing in my center as I said, “You don’t want to walk?”

“Sister. Late. Get on.” He patted his seat.

I licked my lips. “I’m in a skirt.”

His eyes dragged up the length of me, then he grinned wickedly. “I know.”

I rolled my eyes and thought about how best to get on, finally deciding that I would have to hike the skirt up. A lot.

Which I had to do.

In the end, the only thing that was being concealed was my red panties. But only barely.

Every other part of my thigh was exposed to the late afternoon sun and everyone’s gaze that we passed seconds after that as he started his bike up and zoomed through the neighborhood.

I’d latched on to him so fast that he’d laughed, and then held on a little too tight the rest of the way.

My breath hitched when we pulled into the driveway of what had to be his sister’s house to see his little girl standing on the porch looking worried.

That just made me feel like an asshole.

There I was doing things with her father that I shouldn’t be doing, and she was sitting here worried about him because he was late.

She’d already lost her dad for years. I didn’t need to be taking away any more time.

CHAPTER 15

I’m sorry I roasted you. I was trying to flirt.

-Text from Wake to Dutch

WAKE

I got off the bike and stayed where I was while Dutch did the same.

My big body covered hers as she yanked her skirt back down to what she deemed acceptable levels.

I smiled at my kid who was still looking at me nervously.

I lost my smile and narrowed my eyes at her. “Why are you out here looking like that?”

She bit her lip, and then said, “I want you to meet someone, but I don’t want you to kill him.”

“Him?” I asked curiously. “Is this ‘him’ in the house?”

“Not yet,” she said. “He’s on his way. When I heard your bike coming, I texted him to come over.”

My stomach sank.

“Does this ‘him’ have a name?” I inquired.

I heard the truck pull up and looked over my shoulder just in time to see a young man get out of his truck and start heading toward us.

I blinked when I saw him.

This wasn’t a ‘young man’ at all. It was a full on fuckin’ adult.

I narrowed my eyes at him as I felt Dutch’s hand take mine and squeeze.

“He’s fifteen,” Dutch whispered hastily to me. “I shouldn’t be saying this, because it breaks patient confidentiality, but I had him as a patient when his mom died. Swear to God. He’s fifteen. Or maybe sixteen at this point. He is not an adult.”

That didn’t put me at ease in the slightest.

The dude looked twenty-five, and that was all that mattered at that moment in time.

At least, that’s what I was telling myself as I turned my body toward the man. Kid. What the fuck ever.

But Dutch kept herself in front of me, fully blocking my body with hers.

“Dayden!” Dutch said with a warm smile. “How are you?”

Dayden. What kind of a fuckin’ name was Dayden?

A stupid one, that was what.

“Uhh,” Dayden the dumbass said. “Dr. Panchek. Nice to see you. I didn’t know you would be here.”

I snorted.

“Daddy.” I felt Lolo take my other hand, and I closed my eyes tightly shut.

Why did it feel so right to have both of these ladies hanging on me like they were ready for me to blow?

And why did I allow it?

Fuckin’ Dayden.

“Mr. Westfield.” Dayden’s eyes went from Dutch to Lolo and back as he held out his hand.

Dutch squeezed my hand as hard as she could, even if it was infinitesimal at best, and then let me go.

I used my freed hand to shake Dayden’s.

I could all but feel Dutch’s hand on my shirt, ready to pull me back if I decided to go for the kid’s throat. And then there was Lolo’s hand. Hers was clenched so tightly around mine that I knew this dumb, dopey ‘kid’ meant something to her.

He wasn’t ‘fit.’ He wasn’t ‘fat.’ He was just big and burly. Like a teddy bear.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Westfield. Lauren told me a lot about you,” Dayden said.

I allowed his hand to drop and tilted my head to look at him curiously. “How much did she tell you about me?”

His eyes studied mine for a moment. That moment turned even longer into an awkward stretch of time before he said, “I can see Ms. Panchek didn’t share.”

“It’s illegal, as well as a violation of my morals, to share that kind of thing, Dayden,” Dutch said quietly.

That’s when I knew that I wasn’t going to like what I was about to hear.

“Go inside,” I said to the two of them.

Both of them stayed exactly where they were.

“Go. Inside,” I repeated again. “Now.”

The lack of bend in my voice had them both letting go of me and moving like sloths toward the door.

I waited until they were both inside before I turned back to the kid.

That’s when I noticed the vulnerability in his eyes.

“One of the men you killed was the man that molested me for two years.”

CHAPTER 16

If you’re reading this, I’m beautiful.

-Text from Dutch to Wake

DUTCH

The girl, the one that I felt like I had such a connection to from the moment I showed Wake photos of her inside those four prison walls, looked sick to her stomach.

“It’s okay,” I said softly. “He won’t hurt him.”

She swallowed hard and looked up at me.

We were both standing just inside the door, both of us on either side of it, with our gazes pasted on the two people outside standing in the middle of the front yard.

At least, we had been until I said something to her.

She smiled softly. “I know.”

I held out my hand. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Dutch.”

Her smile grew. “Dutch? The one that my dad told my aunt to find?”

“That would be her.”

I turned to find Danyetta standing at the door that led into the kitchen, a smug smile on her face.

“Danyetta.” I nodded. “You have a lovely home.”

“Thank you.” She grinned. “Is he meeting him?”

“He is,” Lolo confirmed. “I think it’s going well.”

Danyetta went to my window beside me and we all looked out at what was going on in the front yard.

When I’d first arrived here, one of my very first patients was Dayden Wilkerson. Dayden, or as he liked to be called, Dayd, had spent his teen years with a male family member that had physically and emotionally assaulted him for years.

That had all stopped one night when a certain someone had gone on a killing spree—literally—and taken out every single pedophile in a county proximity to his daughter. That man took out Dayd’s abuser, too.

“I think it’s going splendidly,” I admitted as I watched Dayd’s shoulders droop. “Dayd’s a good kid. I can’t believe you actually got him to talk to you, though. That kid is clammed up tightly. It took me seventeen visits before he gave anything up at all.”

“We bonded over my dad,” Lolo said softly. “Over how both of us had benefited from him doing what he did.”

“Shit,” Danyetta said as she pulled away. “Quick, let’s go to the kitchen and act like we weren’t watching their every move.”

We split like we’d been shot, all three of us running to the kitchen and coming to a skidding halt in the middle of it.

“Yeah, like that wasn’t suspicious,” Bowie, Danyetta’s son, said. “Negating the fact that y’all sounded like a herd of elephants as y’all ran through here—hello, we have a house on stilts—but y’all didn’t even make it inside here before he was opening the door. There’s no way that he didn’t see y’all running.”

“He’s right,” Wake’s amused voice filled the room. “Dayd, come join our dinner. Everyone, since y’all all know Dayd, I’d like you to meet my girlfriend, Dutch. Dutch, this is my family.”

My heart pounded as I looked at all the expectant faces staring my way.

“We’re new!” I blurted.

As in, thirty seconds ago, new.

I shouldn’t be surprised, really I shouldn’t, but I was sure that surprise was still showing on my face.

“Ms. Panchek is great,” Dayden said quietly.

I smiled at the kid. Gosh, he was definitely one of the good ones.

And it was amazing that he’d found Lolo. At sixteen, for both of them, they couldn’t have found a better pair. Both of them would definitely understand the other, and they wouldn’t have to explain their darkest secrets without someone that completely understood being on their side.

Yes, they would be perfect together.

“She is,” Wake said quietly. “Grab a seat, Dan. I’ll grab an extra table setting.”

Dan left to go snag a seat in the hall, while Wake walked to the kitchen and gathered a plate, which he had to reach up high in a cabinet to get, revealing a strip of skin that was tanned and toned.

I watched with unabashed desire as he methodically collected the things I would need to eat, and then turned to head back toward me.

He grinned when he caught me watching, and I looked away to find both Dayden and Lolo watching me curiously.

Yeah, I really had a thing for her dad.

No, I hadn’t been with him long.

Hell, the only ‘relationship’ I could say that I had with him besides today’s round of sex was me asking him how to get away with killing a guy.

Speaking of killing a guy…

“Dayd, do you know a teacher that goes by the name Annalise Graydon?” I asked as I took the chair that Danyetta brought out.

That’s when Bowie hissed as if I’d used the Lord’s name in vain.

Wake’s eyes went wide, and he looked at Bowie as if his heart had just been ripped out of his chest.

“Worst teacher ever,” Bowie snapped. “I’ve watched her make kids cry just because she could.”

My shoulders slumped.

Okay, if that had gone a different way, I wasn’t sure that Wake’s reasoning from earlier would’ve stuck.

“Bowie had her this year for about two months. Remember that teacher I told you about, Wake? The one that was being trouble because of who Bowie’s uncle was?”

Wake fisted his hands on top of the table.

“That was her?” he asked as he calmly reached for the spoon that was in the casserole in the middle of the table.

Damn, how was he being so calm?

“Sounds like he dodged a bullet,” I muttered as I watched Wake pile food onto first Bowie’s plate, then Lolo’s, before he started on Danyetta’s, and finally mine. Then he handed the serving spoon over to Dayd to allow him to dish out his own.

That was sweet. The only men that I’d had dinner with—my dad and any boyfriends included—had always served themselves first. It’d always annoyed the crap out of me when we were younger because my dad would eat three-quarters of the food and then expect my mom, brother, and me to split the last quarter between us.

That had to be why I no longer talked to my dad anymore.

Mom always deserved better than him.

Though, my dad wasn’t a terrible guy. He was just selfish and really liked to do what he wanted to do.

That included going out and doing whatever he wanted, spending what money he wanted to spend, and pretty much saying ‘fuck them’ to us that were stuck at home while he did fun things.

Hell, I can remember one time in particular that he’d gone to the damn water park with his best friend and his kids, and didn’t bother inviting my mom, brother, or me. I’d found out he went because my dad was tagged in photos on Facebook of all things.

So, needless to say, seeing Wake doing something so simple as making sure everyone ate, including the kids first, before he portioned out his own food, was a shot of happiness to the heart.

Wake was the last, and I assumed he was splitting with Dayd so they didn’t eat it all. Because it was more than obvious that Dayd and Wake could put away the food. Easily.

“What is this?” Dayd asked curiously.

“This”—Lolo practically wiggled in her seat—“is sausage casserole. It’s super simple. Easy. And the best meal anyone could ever ask for.”

I eyed the food in front of me. It was egg noodles, cheese, sauce, and sausage. There really was no way this could go wrong.

I took a bite, and there was a flavor explosion in my mouth. Who knew that something so simple would be so good?

“I usually make this when people are coming over,” Danyetta explained. “It’s a family favorite, and nobody ever has any complaints about it.”

Dayd shrugged. “I’ll eat just about anything, to be honest.”

I smiled before taking another bite. I could tell that Dayd ate just about anything, based solely on how big he was. Damn, the kid would be massive when he finally stopped growing.

Lolo giggled, and I looked at her to see her making heart eyes at Dayd.

“So what is this?” Wake gestured with his fork filled with food before shoving it into his mouth. “Are y’all dating?”

“Yes,” Lolo answered at the same time Dayd said, “If that’s all right with you, sir.”

Wake sighed as he took another bite of food, then looked between the two of them before saying, “You break her, Dayd, any more than she’s already broken, and I’ll find a way to kill you and hide your body in such a way that I never see another day in a prison cell.”

“Daddy!” Lolo cried as she pushed on his arm.

“Understood,” Dayd replied solemnly. “I won’t hurt her, sir. I know what that’s like. We both do. And I’ll never do it. Not ever.”

I felt my chest squeeze.

The two of them definitely had their work cut out for them. They were hurt, and healing, but they still had a long road ahead of them. But if anyone could do it, it was the two of them.

“Now, why did you ask about Ms. Graydon?” Dayd asked, ever the worrier. “I want to be prepared. I have her for zero period every day.”

My stomach sank at that. “We’ll talk after dinner.”

Dayd’s eyes narrowed, but he understood the finality in Wake’s tone. Especially when he gave Bowie a quick glance, then shook his head.

Dayd quieted, and together, we enjoyed a dinner filled with a lot of laughter and teasing.

And not once did I feel like I didn’t belong.

CHAPTER 17

I don’t judge anyone. I judge everyone.

-Wake’s secret thoughts

WAKE

I woke up to something pressed against my side.

Which was a completely foreign and weird feeling.

Even after being married to Amber for years, I never cuddled with her. Never wanted to cuddle.

But Dutch, on the other hand, was all soft and snuggly and the moment she fell asleep in my bed and rolled over practically on top of me, I didn’t push her away.

I liked her there. Sweatiness and all.

Her straight red hair was everywhere. Pressed against my sweaty neck, in the crease of my armpit.

Yeah, we were both going to need a shower.

Especially after what we’d done last night. Also, what I was about to do this morning.

I yawned as quietly as I could, yet the movement and the noise still caused Dutch’s eyes to crack open slightly. Like a disturbed cat that was annoyed that she’d been woken.

“What time is it?” she grumbled darkly. “And why is my hair being pulled?”

I grinned. “I’m fairly sure it’s because it’s stuck between my chest and my arm, right down the crack of my armpit. We’re gonna need a shower.”

She grumbled something under her breath but didn’t bother to move.

I grinned and turned my face so that my nose was buried in her hair.

Strawberries.

Today she smelled like strawberries.

Yesterday, she’d smelled like honey.

“Why does the smell of your hair change so much?” I wondered.

“When I was younger, my dad always used to make me use this really shitty shampoo that smelled like baby powder. Ever since I could afford to buy my own stuff, I’ve gone out of my way to buy any and all brands, just so I can have whatever I want. Needless to say, I change the smell of my hair so often because I don’t stick with a certain shampoo more than twice in a row,” she mumbled, her soft breath fanning against the hair on my chest.

“Your dad sounds like a real asshole,” I grumbled. “Is he still alive?”

She shrugged. “Last I heard? Yes. But I don’t go out of my way to ask about him anymore. If my mom volunteers the information when I actually answer her calls? Then I’ll know. But mostly, she knows that I won’t talk to her if she mentions him too much.”

I turned then, rolling over until she was pressed beneath my body.

She stared at me owlishly for a few long seconds before she said, “I have to go to work.”

I looked across the room at the alarm clock that was sitting on my dresser.

“You don’t get there until eleven on Tuesdays,” I said. “And since today is Tuesday, and it’s only eight, we have plenty of time.”

She looked at me with wide eyes as she said, “You really did have someone spying on me, didn’t you? I know I haven’t seen KD around lately. So, which one of your MC was it?”

“My MC?” I asked in surprise. “I don’t have an MC.”

Her brows rose to her hairline as she said, “You’re joking, right?”

I frowned. “No.”

“Wake,” she snorted. “You literally ride around with all these ex-cons at your back, and think you’re not in a motorcycle club? Wake. Wake. Wake. You’re delusional. They all fall over your every word. I watched y’all at the rodeo a few weeks ago. They were at your back nearly the entire time, observing the crowd as if they were waiting for someone to harm you. Then, when Sheriff Graydon came up and started giving Bain a hard time, you and the rest of your ‘brothers’ were all over him. Last week, I heard Edith Barnes comment about wanting to make y’all’s vests.”

“Cuts,” I grumbled.

“Cuts.” She shrugged. “All of you wear leather ‘cuts’ already. You know everyone’s every move. You’ve been protecting this town. Making it safe. Keeping it your ‘territory.’” She shook her head. “Y’all are an MC. There may not be a name for it officially, but I swear to God, I hear everyone call you Gator Bait MC when they’re referring to y’all.”

“Fuckin’ Davis,” I grumbled. “I told his ass not to start calling us that.”

“Why do I have a feeling that you don’t like the idea of having a club?” she asked.

“Because I don’t,” I admitted. “All of us are on probation. All of us are ex-cons with cops waiting to send us back where we came from. We don’t need to organize a group that’ll get all of us on a watch list.”

She snorted. “Y’all are already on a watchlist, dummy. You think you’re allowed to do anything without the law knowing what’s going on? Or at least trying to figure out what’s going on?”

She had a point.

“Let’s talk about the fact that you’re moving in with me,” I suggested. “Have you thought any more about that?”

Last night, after we’d eaten with my family, and I’d escorted Dayden out the door, I’d headed back home just to have to convince Dutch to stay.

She’d been vehement that she needed to go home, yet I’d been persuasive.

With my mouth.

Just thinking about how she tasted and felt made my semi-erect cock start to stiffen between us.

Before she could protest the move, or say that she had to get to work, I pressed myself against her entrance.

She hissed in a breath, her eyes going wide.

“I’m sore,” she admitted.

I smirked at her. “I’ll go slow.”

Then I eased inside of her as carefully as I could, giving her plenty of time to adjust to me as I did.

When I was planted fully inside of her, I lifted one of her thighs up to my shoulder, then pressed deep.

Her breathing hitched, and her eyes all but rolled back in her head.

“I think moving in with you is a terrible idea,” she said. “I have this brand-new farm. It has goats. How the hell am I going to take care of goats if I move in with you all the way over here?”

She had a point.

It would look suspicious if she moved in here and left her goats behind.

“Do you want to live on a farm with goats?” I asked. “Or did you buy that farm with the explicit purpose to do what you did? And now that you’re done with doing what you did, you can put it up for sale and move in with me?”

She blinked, her hands going to my side as I twisted my hips for emphasis.

She bit her lip. “I’m not sure that would look good on my credit.”

“I’m not sure your credit has anything to do with you changing your mind,” I admitted, pulling all the way out, just to push smoothly right back in. “And I have a fenced yard that’s fairly big. If you want to bring your goats along, you can.”

She let go of her lip when a small gasp escaped her mouth, her back arching upward slightly as she said, “Oh, right there.”

Now, when a lady says ‘right there’ you don’t change a goddamn thing. You keep doing exactly what you’re doing, at the same pace that you’d been doing it.

Except, I wanted her acquiescence on moving in. And to get that…

I stopped, and she groaned.

“You’re a bastard,” she whined in the cutest voice that I’d ever heard.

I smoothed my hand up the length of her torso, skimming the underside of her breast, then continued until the long column of her neck was in my hand.

Squeezing lightly on either side of her throat, I said, “Move in with me.”

She licked her lips nervously, her eyes as wide as saucers, and her pupils so dilated I knew she couldn’t tell whether she needed to be scared or allow herself to be aroused.

Arousal won out, and she swiveled her hips.

“I’ll move in,” she complied. “And I’ll get rid of the goats. There’s a neighbor lady down the road that’s kept them for me five times now. They get out and go down to her house anyway.”

I grinned.

Her heartbeat, which I could feel underneath two of my fingers at her throat, sped up.

She liked my smile.

Noted.

“Under a few conditions,” she continued.

My brows rose in question as I kept my eyes directly on hers, but started to move again.

So slow that I might as well not be moving at all.

But that little twist at the end caused her pussy to spasm each time that I did it.

“What are those conditions?” I asked, squeezing lightly on her neck.

Her mouth parted, and her heart rate picked up all over again.

Well then.

It was obvious that she liked it.

“Conditions,” I reminded her.

Her voice came out breathy as she said, “I don’t want you to think this is permanent.”

I snorted. “Why can’t I think it’s permanent?”

She opened her mouth, just to close it as fast. “Well, mostly because it’s not.”

“Why isn’t it?” I asked.

She frowned. “Because it can’t be. We don’t have a relationship. I’m not moving in here because I want to be moving in here. I’m moving in here because Sheriff Graydon is just sneaky enough that he could figure out what’s going on.”

I scoffed. “That old fool will never figure a thing out. The only reason he even came close to guessing about that dumbass you offed is because he fit the bill. Pedophile. Not punished for his crimes. And now he’s missing. I’m sure one’ll go missing next week, he’ll have searched for missing pedophiles that got what they deserved, and then he’ll come asking about that one next.”

She hissed out a breath. “Then why do you want me to be here? To be your alibi? To be your sex buddy?”

The smirk that turned up the corner of my mouth pissed her off.

She started shoving me away, and I tightened my hand around her throat.

She stilled completely, her eyes going wide, and I started to fuck her for real.

Her eyes were directed at me, filled with a small amount of fear.

But the way her pussy was rippling and practically gushing for me… well, that told a completely different story.

Her eyes closed then, and I felt the first signs of her impending orgasm start to show.

Her pussy undulated, her breathing hitched, and her nipples were tight points.

It was her ‘I’m gonna come’ though that had me squeezing just a little bit harder.

She came. And came hard.

“Oh, fuck,” she breathed.

Her orgasm was like a bomb.

It set off a chain reaction in me.

Letting go of her throat, I caught both of her hips in my hands and started to fuck her for real.

Our hips smashed together like pistons, and the sound of slapping flesh filled the quiet morning air around us.

Our breaths were coming out in harsh pants, and when she came for a second time, I followed right along with her.

We collapsed next to each other, legs tangled, and sweaty bodies pressed so tightly together that we were slick.

“I want you to move in for multiple reasons,” I said quietly. “One of those being so I can fuck you any time I want, yes. But the others? Well, that’s for me to know, and you to find out, if you’re not a coward and move in.”

I wouldn’t build this relationship on a lie or a bribe or anything that she could later use against me.

If she wanted to stay, it’s because I wanted her there, and she wanted to be there. I wasn’t going to force anyone to do anything. Definitely not her.

She rolled over onto her belly, reached for the pillow, then yanked it down over her head.

“Go away. First thing you need to learn about me. I don’t do mornings. And I don’t do early mornings if I don’t have to go into work for at least another hour,” she replied, muffled.

I smoothed my hand up her ass, squeezed, and got a good view of my release oozing out of her pussy as I did.

It made me hard all over again.

But, sadly, I had duties.

One of those was walking Tex who was staring patiently at me with his leash in his mouth.

I rolled my eyes and got up.

“Come on, Tex. Let’s leave sleeping beauty to her rest,” I called to the dog.

CHAPTER 18

Holy fuck.

-Dutch looking at Wake

DUTCH

Officially moving in with Wake Westfield, day 1

“And what do you think I should do, Doc?” my patient, Rest, asked.

I looked at Rest and knew that he wasn’t going to like the truth bomb I was about to set off in front of him.

“Rest,” I said as I looked at my patient. Nothing else had worked up until this point. But here we were. “What, exactly, are you hoping to accomplish by staying single for the rest of your life?”

Rest blinked. “I’m hoping that by staying single, my mother will want to talk to me again after the fiasco with my ex.”

I shook my head. “Your ex had a part in hurting the relationship with your mother, yes. She lied, cheated on you, and stole from her. Of course, your mother isn’t going to like that. She also didn’t like how you handled the situation. However, your mother is an adult, she is more than capable of taking responsibility for her part in how this situation turned out. Do you want my professional opinion?”

Rest looked gob smacked. I’d never spoken so forcefully, or truthfully, with him before. Usually, I allowed Rest to get his sadness out, talk it over, and leave. Because, in all honesty, a patient had to want to make the change. And Rest had never wanted to make that change. He’d only wanted what he couldn’t have.

But Wake Westfield, the blunt speaker of all blunt speakers, had rubbed off on me. In a day. And here I was, telling Rest like it was.

Shit.

The RV that I was in took that moment to shake with the wind that was forcefully blowing in from the ocean.

I’d moved my RV today. Previously, it’d been at my old office, in front of the wreckage. However, this morning I’d gotten a call that they needed the parking lot clear because they were about to start on demolition and debris removal. Meaning, my office would be built back to all its previous glory in exactly six months. Or so the contractor assured me.

I’d moved the RV to public beach parking, guessing that by tonight I’d have to move it to my place or Wake’s, depending on if he forced the situation with us living together permanently.

I still wasn’t altogether sure why the hell I was living with him. But it felt right, and from a very young age, I’d known to trust my instincts. And my instincts were screaming at me that staying exactly where I was, under Wake’s eye, was the way to do it.

Then again, maybe that was my guilt for taking a life.

I didn’t know.

All I knew was that I was going to stay with Wake, and damn the consequences.

“Wow, it sure is windy,” Rest said nervously.

I placed my pen that I was using to take notes on the paper, then sat forward and placed that paper on the coffee table between us.

“Rest,” I said quietly. “I think you should move on, and stop living your life hoping that your mother will come back into it. Your mother is not your future. Your future is babies, and a wife, and grandbabies. A house in the country.”

That’d been one of Rest’s most animatedly detailed dreams that he’d shared with me. To own a farm where he could grow vegetables, and he could raise his kids in the country life that he’d had before his father had passed away.

“A house.” His eyes glowed then. “I have been denying myself that, haven’t I?”

His mother was a staunch believer that city-living was the best kind of living. After Rest’s father had died of a heart attack at thirty-nine, after sixteen years of living on a farm and raising their son, she’d left. Leaving a hole in Rest’s heart.

“You have,” I said simply.

“Then I’ll do it. You don’t happen to want to sell that brand-new house of yours, do you?” he asked jokingly.

He’d asked it every time he’d seen me since I’d bought it six months ago.

I tilted my head as the perfect solution to a dilemma presented itself to me. “Tell you what. You take Thelma and Louise, the goats, and I’ll sell it to you for what I paid for it.”

Rest jumped up like I’d punched him in the chest. “Sold!”

Was it possible to sell a house in a day?

Yes, when you knew the man that did the title transfers and owned a closing company.

Rest had the house in his name by the end of the day, and I was quite a bit richer.

He’d given me a bonus for rush selling and leaving all the furniture in it.

Which worked for me because I didn’t want, nor need, it anyway.

I was shoving all my shit into trash bags in my bedroom when I heard the pipes.

Smiling to myself at how excited I was that Wake was on his way here to see me, to check in, made me practically skip to the door in my haste to see him.

I flung it open and watched as he finished the trek up my—now Rest’s—driveway.

When he stopped and put both feet down, I couldn’t help but stare at him in awe.

He was dressed in jeans, black boots, a black T-shirt, and backward ball cap with shades covering his eyes.

It shouldn’t be as hot as it was, yet, there I was, practically dancing at the sight of him.

He caught sight of me and smirked.

I wondered if he knew what he did to me.

My guess? He knew he tied me in knots.

“Hey,” I said when he got close enough. “What are you doing here?”

From what I understood this morning, he hadn’t planned on being back until way later tonight. He’d told me that he had a meeting to attend with a shareholder at a bank, and he would be out of touch until then.

That’d been why I hadn’t told him about the house, or asked permission to park my RV in his front yard.

Tomorrow, it’d be gone, back at the public beach access again. But yet, that night, I’d still need to return it there until I found a more semi-permanent solution.

“Came to see why you’re here and not at my—our—place,” he answered. “Got home early to find the RV there, but no you. Checked in with your neighbor, and found out your car was here. So here I am.”

My lips tipped up. “Let me guess. One of my neighbors is part of Gator Bait.”

He rolled his eyes hard. “Aodhan.”

Ahh, the Irishman.

Also, from what I’d been able to learn from around town, Bowie’s dad. Though, I hardly ever saw Danyetta or Aodhan together.

The one time I had, it was with Bowie staring at them from the back window of Danyetta’s car, looking on worriedly.

“Since when?” I wondered. “That seems kind of sudden.”

He snorted. “Actually, it’s not all that sudden. He lived there before he went to the pen. When he got home, he moved back. Easy as that. It just so happened that you obliged my curiosity and moved in right next to him.”

That made me wonder how much Aodhan had seen.

I looked up the road and squinted, wondering if the view I had from my porch was the same from his. If so, I was in the clear. If the man had any binoculars… well, then, I might be in trouble.

It wasn’t like I’d done the deed in the front yard or anything, but I hadn’t really hidden anything I was doing, either. I hadn’t wanted to look suspicious as fuck pulling my car into the barn.

Maybe I should have…

“Oh,” I said. “Well…”

I didn’t know what to say.

Well, I knew what I wanted to say. I didn’t know what I should.

In the end, I stayed silent and held the door open wider for him to come inside.

“Wow,” he said. “Love what you did to the place.”

When he brushed past me, I felt a warm tingle of sensation trickle up my arm where we’d brushed.

I grimaced as I looked around. “The place was in need of some work before I bought it. The family that lived here all grew old and died. I think it was passed down to a person over sixty for the last thirty years. They never had the time or the inclination for this much hard work. Which, apparently, neither do I.”

Wake crossed his arms as he studied the wall of stuffed animals. And not the cute ones you bought from Build-A-Bear. The kind that a taxidermist stuffed that no one ever came for, and that sat in boxes in the back of a closet for two years.

“Is that a stuffed rat?” he asked.

I walked over to the rat under question, picked it up, then showed it to him. “It’s a koozie. For beer.”

His mouth parted slightly as he stared. “Wow.”

“I know,” I snorted. “I think the original owner owned the taxidermist in town. This whole house, as well as the back shed, are just packed to the gills with stuffed animals.”

“Nice,” he said. “Be nice if you could just sell it all in one go, and not have to…”

I held up my hand before he could finish. “I actually sold it today. As of right now, I’m no longer the owner. I’m getting my bedroom crap out today. Tomorrow, I’ll come back for all the other crap that is still in boxes and the little stuff that’s just lying around. But honestly, other than my bedroom, I don’t have that much. I keep most of it in my camper now.”

His eyes gleamed. “How did you sell it that fast?”

I explained Rest, and his eyes filled with mirth by the time I was done.

“That’s funny,” he said. “If I’m thinking of the correct guy, I think he’s been trying to buy Aodhan’s property for a while now.”

“I know,” I admitted. “He wants a house that he doesn’t have to fix up too much to move in. And out here, there aren’t all that many of them, being this close to the Gulf like we are.”

“Agreed,” he said as he moved toward my bedroom. “Bedroom through here?”

I nodded and followed him as he walked to the first empty bag he found and walked to the closet. “Let’s get started.”

Together, we had the entire bedroom packed and loaded into my car, with as many boxes as would fit. By the time I was leaving, I only had enough for a truckload, and nothing more.

“I’ll have one of the guys—”

I interrupted him by saying, “From Gator Bait MC?”

He grumbled something low and dark under his breath before he said, “Yeah, sure.”

“Did you back the RV up?” he asked curiously.

I rolled my eyes. “Just because I’m a girl means I can’t drive a trailer?”

“No,” he said. “Because I watched you back out of your driveway and almost hit the mailbox, makes me wonder if you can back up a trailer.”

He had a point.

“I didn’t do it,” I admitted. “I got your friend Etienne to do it. I’d intended to leave it in the road …” I shrugged. “But Etienne was there dropping something off at your front door, which I put inside on your desk, when I arrived. When he saw me, he offered. And I took him up on his offer.”

I’d gotten the RV out of necessity after my building had gone caput.

Just because I had it, didn’t mean I could drive it.

Maybe with time… but I highly doubted it.

The RV was temporary, too. Something my insurance had covered in the short term since there weren’t any other places nearby I could rent out.

They’d dropped the damn thing off in my parking lot and expected me to know what to do with it from there.

Needless to say, I was still learning.

“Etienne?” Wake’s eyebrows went up practically to his hairline. “What?”

“Etienne,” I repeated. “He said he was your friend. Was he not?”

Wake waved off my worry. “No, he is. It’s just that he was still in prison the last time I talked to him.” His eyes went hard. “Baby, we need to figure out what the hell we’re going to do about your utter lack of regard for yourself. You didn’t know him.”

He was right.

But the way he’d talked about Wake, and how he’d spent the last five years of his life with him… well, I’d trusted him blindly. Nobody talked about their life in prison so openly unless they’d come to terms with it. At least, from what my understanding about the situation was, they didn’t.

“I’ll try not to trust people that talk about seeing your penis and your ass in prison,” I said.

His eyebrows hiked up once again. “What?”

I grinned then as I took the T-shirt I was wearing off, leaving me in only a tank top and short shorts that were hiked so high up my legs from all the moving we’d been doing, that my vagina was practically eating them.

His eyes traveled down my body as I explained my cryptic comment.

“He was talking about you. What you’d said during your time imprisoned. Telling him that you wanted a hot, curvy woman. He said that was the first thing you were going to look for when you got out.” I tilted my head slightly to the side. “And he said you found it.”

Wake’s lips twitched up at one side. “I sure did.”

I bit the side of my lip before saying, “I know this is new and all, but maybe we should talk about expectations when we’re ‘pretending’ to do this real dating thing.”

His eyes darkened. “We’re not pretending. We’re doing this real dating thing. You just can’t seem to comprehend that we are.” He paused. “And before you ask, the reason he knew I wanted a curvy redhead was because you’d come to see me, and you were all that I could think or talk about for weeks. Literally, you were on the top of my to-do list the moment I got out. I’d been all set to find you, but our situations are a bit abnormal. That, and I didn’t want to bring any attention to you while you did what you had to do.”

While I killed a US senator that I could go to prison for life for.

That was actually really sweet of him to stay away.

“Wake…” I hesitated.

“And if you’re wondering, no. I was able to not have sex for years. I could wait a little bit longer to do it with you when you were ready,” he answered.

My mouth fell open. “That’s a long time to wait.”

“Honey,” he said quietly. “The men that say they ‘can’t wait’ and get it from somewhere else aren’t really men. Trust me when I say, if a woman is worth waiting for, they’ll wait. All day long. Months. Years. You don’t do that to a good woman and sleep well at night.”

That actually made me tear up.

I used the hem of my tank to wipe away the sweat and one single tear that’d managed to seep out of my eyelid, then watched as his eyes heated even more.

“You’re not wearing a bra.”

I tilted my head slightly. “Actually, I kind of am. It’s this weird thing…”

I showed him the stupid bra I’d seen in an ad on social media of all places.

“It looks like a headband with bra pads on it. But it smooshes and lifts them up so well that I thought I’d give it a try. It’s lasted all day, and even through us moving,” I explained.

“Ahh,” he said as his eyes took everything in. “That’s pretty impressive. No offense or anything, but you have some big tits. I wouldn’t think something that simple and easy could hold them up.”

I started to laugh, then lowered my shirt back to where I was hiding my breasts from him, then managed to take the bra off to show him.

His eyes heated even more when his gaze snagged on my nipples through my shirt.

“I could go braless,” I said. “I do it all the time, actually. But I try not to do that at work, because it makes people uncomfortable.”

He reached down and adjusted himself. “Uncomfortable. Yes.”

CHAPTER 19

There’s turned on. And then there’s turned on when I’m around Dutch. Those are two completely different feelings.

-Wake to Etienne

WAKE

I shifted again, trying to get my cock to go to a place in my jeans that didn’t feel like it was being suffocated, and realized that wouldn’t be happening. Not in the jeans I was wearing.

Her eyes lowered to where I was adjusting myself, then she laughed.

“I sold my bed. We can’t make use of it with no sheets,” she teased.

She thought that I wouldn’t take her. That I would just allow this feeling to drift away.

Well, she was sorely mistaken.

I moved so that she would be hidden from my body against the front of the house where we’d stopped, then brought my hand up to trail a finger down the center line of her body.

“Last I checked, we don’t need a bed to do this,” I rasped.

She licked her lips again. “That was one of the things that I was going to talk to you about.”

I slowly lifted her shirt up so that I could see her pretty titties.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Our lack of condom use,” she whispered. “I’m protected… I think. But we can’t be doing this without being protected first.”

“What do you mean ‘you think?’” I asked curiously, not stopping the lifting of the shirt until it was straight up off her body.

I dropped it unceremoniously to the ground, wincing when it landed in a pile of pollen.

“It means that I’m taking expired birth control that I probably should’ve thrown out,” she admitted. “I… after I saw you, I started taking it again. I had a year’s supply in my drawer because I saw this OB/GYN I didn’t like. He told me I needed to be taking birth control. I told him sure, and then he prescribed it to me. I picked it up monthly, but instead of taking it, I stashed it in my drawers… until you came along,” she replied breathlessly.

The breathless part was due to me circling one nipple with the tip of my finger.

She was standing there on her front porch, barefoot and in a pair of shorts, and I was seconds away from fucking her.

“I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?” I asked. “Unless you want me to ask the only OB/GYN I know. But I don’t talk to him all that much since he started seeing my ex-wife, so…”

She laughed, causing her breasts to jolt. Which my eyes took in with excited glee.

“Wow,” I said. “That’s impressive.”

“What?” she asked, cupping her breasts. “The fact that my breasts are so big that they jiggle when I breathe?”

I bent down just low enough to catch one of those bad boys in my mouth, then said, “Yes. God. They fuckin’ turn me on.”

Her hands dug into my hair, and I couldn’t help but suck just a little bit harder than I would normally, causing her to curse.

“Shit.” She laughed. “That hurt.”

“Want to know what else hurts?” I asked as I pressed against the apex of her thighs. “My dick right now.”

She reached between us and started to caress my cock through my jeans.

“You poor, poor baby,” she cooed, her eyes dark pools of bluest blue. “We should really fix that, don’t you think?”

“Yes, yes I do,” I said as I pulled her into me. “Right now. Right here.”

Her eyes widened. “Here?”

Ahh, the innocence in her eyes. The sweet way she said ‘here’ had me excited to ruin her. To take that innocence of hers and shred it.

“Here,” I confirmed, moving to run my finger along the seam of her blue jean shorts. “I don’t think you’ll need to take these off, though.”

She blinked.

“I… what?” she asked, sounding confused.

I unzipped my zipper and maneuvered my hard cock out of the small space, then huffed out a small laugh as her eyes locked on it and stayed there.

“Why does that look so intimidating right now?” she breathed.

I moved closer until I had her where I wanted her, then picked her up and pressed her against the wall.

“Because you’re not used to my size yet,” I answered. “Still comes as a shock when you see it.”

Those were all guesses.

I didn’t have a clear answer for her because my brain was on a one-way track.

My body knew what it wanted, and it was as if it was going to allow me to think of that, and only that.

“You should probably never wear these shorts out in public,” I said as I easily moved the blue jeans to the side, along with the gusset of her panties.

She licked her lips, then reached down for my cock, pumping it a few times before lining it up with her entrance.

Glad that she was on the same wavelength as me, I allowed her to notch me at her entrance, and then slowly started the drive inside of her.

The first few seconds would be me accommodating the fact that she needed me to go slow. The rest? Well, that would be where I felt like we needed to go.

“Wake,” she hissed as she stretched to acclimate to me. “Holy hell.”

Her eyes were hazy with desire, and the way she was biting her lip again was driving me insane.

I leaned forward and caught that bottom lip between my teeth, giving it a small nip before letting it go.

“If you value being able to sit, I highly suggest you not do any more lip biting until you can adjust to me,” I rasped.

God, she felt so fuckin’ good. Hot. Wet. Tight.

She was strangling me with the warmest, wettest fist I’d ever felt in all my years.

And I hadn’t been a fuckin’ monk.

My hands squeezed on her outer thighs as I tried to find purchase, to control the inner beast inside of me that was all but howling at me to take her. Fuck her until she was screaming my name.

There was the other, more rational side of me saying I needed to take it slow, because otherwise she’d be out of commission for a day or two afterward.

But God. There she went biting that lip again.

That’s all it took.

Any ability to go slow, to give her time, was gone.

“Oh, shit,” she breathed. “The UPS man just drove up to my gate.”

I slammed my hips into hers, knocking her hard into the wall behind her.

“Oh, fuck,” she whispered. “Shit, shit, shit. I think he sees us.”

Her pussy was rippling around my cock, as if she liked the idea of someone seeing her.

And that was all the encouragement I needed.

Fucking her now, hard and fast, I bent down and caught one perky nipple between my lips and sucked. Hard.

She cried out even louder, her hands scrabbling for purchase in my hair.

The sting of my hair being pulled couldn’t deter me, though.

I was a man on a mission.

Lifting her legs up higher, pushing them wider, I made more room for my own hips and started to take her even deeper.

She was shaking now, her eyes wide, and then there went that lip biting again.

I knew the moment that the UPS guy saw us, too.

I’d heard the crunch of his shoes on the gravel walkway. Then the thump, thump as he walked up the set of stairs to put the package by the front door.

And though we weren’t exactly close to it, we were near enough that he couldn’t miss us.

Couldn’t miss the fact that I was fucking her.

And hadn’t slowed when he’d shown.

“Oh, hell,” I heard him say. “Shoot, sorry.”

Then he was scampering off.

“Fairly sure we just scarred him for life,” Dutch panted.

“He could only see my back and your legs,” I said between breaths. “Fuck, you feel so tight and good right now. Get there, baby. Get there.”

The anguish in my voice made her clench around me, and I squeezed her ass in desperation as I tried to hold off on coming.

We heard the truck start up, then idle at the gate.

“He can’t see anything,” I grunted. “Don’t worry.”

“He can see a little,” she disagreed. “I can see his truck tire.”

I bit down lightly on her nipple and she squeaked.

“Fuck him,” I growled, the words guttural and desperate. “Come for me now.”

She laughed. “It’s cute how you think that just by saying those words,” she panted, “that I’ll come. I’m close, though. I just love how great it feels as you stroke that spot inside of me. God, every time the head of your cock hits it, I want to jolt right out of my ski—”

I stopped, pulled out, then moved us to where she was bent over the railing, and I was once again taking her from behind.

Hiking her shorts and underwear to the side, I lined my cock up with her entrance and surprised myself and her when I eased inside.

She groaned, her forehead going to the wood underneath her.

I reached forward to fondle her breasts as I slowly took her, taking away the control she’d somehow taken over at some point.

With measured, deep strokes, I made sure to hit that ‘spot’ inside of her until she was all but shaking with the need to come.

“You close now, baby girl?” I rasped. “Because it sure feels like you are.”

“You’re the devil,” she moaned. “I’m ready. Make me come.”

I laughed at her.

No, this would go on as long as I wanted it to.

I had control over my baser needs, dammit.

I would…

She clenched herself around my cock, and then reached her hand in between us and started to run her fingers over my jeans, right where my balls were hanging.

“Please, Wake. Please, let me come,” she pleaded.

I closed my eyes and stroked faster. Not too fast. But enough that it had both of us there within thirty seconds.

“Gonna fill you up with that man jacking off in the back of his rig,” I rasped. “Watching you. Wishing he was me.”

She cried out and took me with her, pulling us both under so hard that I momentarily blacked out.

When I finally forced myself to open my eyes, it was to see the sheriff’s car pulling up at the gate behind the UPS man that was blocking our drive.

“Holy fuck,” I grumbled as my balls gave a small aftershock of pleasure.

She panted slightly when she twisted her head to look at me. “That was the hottest and naughtiest thing I’ve ever done. We’re never doing it again.”

I grinned. We would see about that.

Sadly, that grin fell off my face when I saw the sheriff get out of his car and start marching his way up Dutch’s driveway.

I moved us quickly, turning and twisting until she was once again with her back to the wall of her house, while I was facing her.

Tucking, smoothing, and zipping commenced, leaving me with only Dutch’s top off and my body covering hers.

“That’s illegal,” I heard Sheriff Graydon snap.

I tugged my tee off and handed it to the woman behind me.

“What?” I asked as I waited for her to dress fully.

“Public displays of affection,” he answered, pulling out his cuffs.

I started to laugh. “Um, we’re not in public, genius. We’re on her property. You’re the one who is trespassing. The moment you crossed the fence line at the gate, you were officially trespassing.”

Sheriff Graydon kept coming, his hands now caressing his cuffs like they were sensual objects and not pieces of metal.

“We’ll figure that out at the station,” Sheriff Graydon said stiffly. “You’ll be coming with me.”

I tilted my head sideways as I said, “Just me?”

“Just you,” Sheriff Graydon confirmed.

I gave Dutch’s hip a squeeze, making sure that she was dressed completely before I stepped away. “I’ll follow you down to the station so I have my bike.”

“No,” Sheriff Graydon disagreed. “You won’t. Now you can either make this easy and come willingly, or I’ll deploy my taser. Which will it be?”

I almost wanted him to deploy the taser. The more charges I could rack up against him, the better.

But I didn’t want Dutch to see that.

I wanted her to deal with this with ease.

“Fine,” I said. “Just let me make a call first.”

“You reach toward your pocket, and I’ll tase you,” Graydon replied.

I stepped away from Dutch and watched as Graydon tensed.

“Call my sister. She’ll know who to call,” I insisted. “In the meantime, can you have Aodhan come get my bike? I don’t want to leave it here.”

Dutch looked so angry at that moment in time that I had to give her a ‘cool it’ look with my eyes.

It wouldn’t do to have him looking into her at this point.

Maybe I shouldn’t have brought her into this.

Maybe I should’ve stayed away and kept Graydon’s focus solely on me.

That was what I dealt with on a daily basis, though. My brashness. Doing shit before I completely thought it through.

When I’d encouraged her to move in with me, I’d thought it was best to have her there where I could protect her, just in case. That, and I wanted to fuck her. And fucking her seemed easier if she was under the same roof as me.

And yes, it would be extra helpful having someone living with me. Especially Dutch who was an upstanding member of the community, and not involved in an unofficial official motorcycle club like I was.

But, there were downfalls.

Such as right now.

I could see that she was angry and wanted to lash out. But what she didn’t know was that Sheriff Graydon was a vindictive asshole. He’d been holding a grudge against me since my father moved out of state with his wife, leaving all of us behind.

Funny story, I hadn’t liked my father any more than he had. Yet, Graydon had gone out of his way to fuck with us ever since. As if two little kids, Danyetta being twelve, and me fourteen, could’ve stopped two grown adults from doing what they wanted to do.

“You can’t do this!” Dutch squeaked as Graydon moved forward to throw cuffs on me.

I allowed him to, because I just knew that he was waiting for me to fight.

I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

Winking at Dutch, I said, “Call Aodhan. Bike. Lawyer. Love you.”

The ‘love you’ had slipped out before I could take it back.

Her eyes widened and I knew what she was thinking.

It was too soon. I was just saying that in front of the sheriff.

Little did she know, I’d meant it.

CHAPTER 20

Why are fancy burgers so tall? What do you expect me to do with that? Smash that bitch down like McDonald’s and move on.

-Dutch to Danyetta

DUTCH

Love you.

His words from earlier had shaken me.

The first stop was to Aodhan’s house.

I knocked on the door, still in Wake’s T-shirt with his juices running down my inner thigh, and waited uncomfortably for him to answer.

He did with a shirt off, sweat coating his skin, and an angry expression on his face that had me taking a step back.

“What?” he snapped.

I swallowed hard, then pointed across the road at my house. “Um, we were there. Me and, um, Wake. We were there, doing… errrm, stuff. Outside. Stuff where we probably shouldn’t have been. And the sheriff came up and arrested Wake.”

Aodhan blinked. Once. Twice. Then said, “You were fucking outside, got caught, and Wake is now going to jail for it?”

I nodded miserably.

“You’re allowed to fuck on your own property,” he said. “You’re not in public. That’s not something he can be arrested for.”

I licked my lips nervously as I said, “Wake wanted you to get his bike and bring it over here. And I’m supposed to call his lawyer.”

Aodhan sighed and widened the door before saying, “Get in here. Let me grab a shirt, and I’ll walk back with you.”

I’d been so nervous and anxious earlier that I’d practically run over here without thinking. Duh. I should’ve taken my car.

Jesus.

He disappeared into a room and left me standing in his front foyer.

I couldn’t even take a single thing in seeing as I was so nervous.

In the meantime, I shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably.

I heard him muttering, and then came out moments later dressed fully with boots and a ball cap on.

He had his phone pressed to his ear, and he gestured for me to follow him.

I did, listening to his conversation as we made it back to my house.

When we got there, he hung up and shoved his phone into his pocket.

“I got his lawyer headed there. They will probably beat them to the station. In the meantime, you get your shit, lock up, and then head to the station. Only after you’re dressed, though.” His eyes went pointedly to my chest, then to my legs.

I felt my face flame.

Holy hell, could this day get any worse?

Yes. Yes, it could.

“You can’t just hold him for no reason, Sheriff,” Wake’s lawyer repeated. “This is against the law. And you’re not above the law just because you’re sheriff. In fact, if he’s not released to me in less than two minutes, I’ll be bringing this house down around you,” Sage Carmichael, Wake’s lawyer, said confidently.

“We got him on indecency with a minor,” Sheriff snapped.

The fuckin’ nerve of this guy. Out of everyone in the goddamn world, there’s no way in hell that Wake would be caught dead anywhere near ‘indecency with a minor’ when he went to jail for pedophiles hurting minors. The fuckin’ moron.

“What?” I shrieked. “You do not, you lying sack of…”

Sage caught my arm in a bruising grip, then guided me to the side of the room. “Calm down. I will handle this.”

I knew he would.

I just couldn’t believe the fuckin’ balls on the sheriff.

Indecency with a minor.

What a crock of shit.

“If anyone should be getting in trouble for indecency with a minor, it’s his fuckin’ sister,” I growled.

Aodhan, who hadn’t left, looked over at me sharply. “What?”

I felt his eyes more than saw them as I said, “Wake didn’t tell you? I had a patient, he is in Sheriff Graydon’s sister’s class. The kid had a whole lot to say about Annalise Graydon, and not a damn one of them was good.”

“Annalise Graydon, as in the teacher, Annalise Graydon?” Aodhan asked carefully.

Ruh-roh.

“Yes,” I confirmed quietly. “I’ll tell you everything when he’s not there studying me like I’m an interesting bug he’d like to squash.”

And Sheriff Graydon really was.

“That won’t happen,” Aodhan grumbled.

“How about you tell us exactly what you think you have on him,” Sage said carefully, seemingly curious but not overly so, like we both knew he was.

“According to a confidential informant, today, while at his house, he exposed himself to his daughter,” Sheriff Graydon stuttered.

I immediately had my hackles raised. “Well, that would not have been difficult if his daughter was actually at his house this morning. Which she wasn’t. Because she’s still living with her aunt because that’s where all of her belongings are, and where she’s been living since Wake was imprisoned. We did go over and see her today, together, but what we did not do was expose ourselves in any way.”

“Who did you say that you got this information from?” Sage questioned.

Sheriff Graydon’s eyes went slightly wide, as if he hadn’t realized that Lolo wasn’t living with Wake.

Well, maybe he should’ve dug for that information before he’d suggest such a heinous thing.

“Um, well…” Sheriff Graydon said. “His neighbor.”

“His neighbor,” I said carefully. “Well, he does have a lot of them. And I’m sure that you can confirm with almost every single one but the neighbor under question, that they’ve never even seen Lolo at our house.”

Lolo stayed at her place and Wake always traveled to her to make it easier on her.

“I still have him on…”

“We’ve already gone over that,” I said. “We were on my property. And Wake never took his fuckin’ pants off. The only thing you might could’ve seen were my tits swinging. And, just sayin’, but you didn’t arrest me.”

God, my country was coming out to play now. My accent always got thicker when I was pissed. Might could. I hadn’t said that since college.

“Maybe I should,” Graydon commented.

Sage placed his hand on my arm to quiet me before I could go off on the stupid sheriff, then stepped partially in front of me before saying, “We have already gone over that part since initially we were all under the assumption that you had him in here with ‘public indecency’ as you put it. Now that you have proof that his daughter doesn’t live with him, and that he has an alibi—airtight, might I add…” he emphasized. “It’s time to either release him, or we’ll take a different set of actions. The kind that’ll get you kicked out of your job rather quickly. Since it’s obvious that you don’t know how to do your job competently.”

Graydon’s face looked mottled red when Sage was done. “I’ll get him for something eventually.”

Sage’s face went tense when he said, “That’s illegal, too—looking for something to pin on someone.”

Graydon twisted around, his boots stomping so hard on the floor that I was surprised the ancient-looking tile didn’t break with his footsteps.

Aodhan laughed as Graydon opened the door so hard that it slammed closed on him before he could make it all the way inside—causing him to bump backward and to the side slightly.

“I think that between the three of you, he won’t know who he hates more right now,” Aodhan murmured. “I’m impressed, darlin’. You have claws.”

I tossed a glare at him over my shoulder, which caused him to raise his hands up high in surrender.

Before he could reply, though, Wake was exiting the room, rubbing his wrists.

My eyes narrowed on his wrists, and what I saw there made me livid.

“So we’re into police brutality now?” I asked carefully, trying to contain myself and my reaction.

“Or something,” Sage growled. “Sheriff Graydon will go down.”

Wake’s wrists were raw looking. And I knew that Wake wouldn’t have struggled in those unless they were too tight, forcing him to.

“It’s okay,” Wake said as he dropped his arms down to his sides. “We ready?”

“I can give you a ride back to your bike,” I grumbled darkly. “Then we can…” I trailed off. Because I didn’t know what we would do next.

I didn’t know what Wake had planned.

I knew that he usually ate dinner with his daughter, but from what I’d last heard, his daughter and Dayden had a date tonight.

That would free Wake up to do whatever he wanted to do.

“Let’s go talk outside,” Sage suggested. “Away from this corrupt place.”

I agreed wholeheartedly.

Wake caught my hand and led me out the door, and I found myself squeezing on to his appendage as if my life depended on it.

And maybe it did. Because I was two seconds away from murdering a police officer.

Which was absolutely terrible.

But it helped that I felt that Sheriff Graydon was only in an office of the law for his own enjoyment. Or possibly some hidden factor that helped him get what he needed for his back-room agenda accomplished.

“Over here,” Sage suggested as we moved to the back of the lot.

We stopped beside Sage’s Beemer, then he turned to face the two of us.

Aodhan leaned against Sage’s car, earning him a small glare from Sage.

Ultimately, though, his focus was completely on us.

“I don’t know what y’all are doing,” Sage said without preamble. “But I highly, highly suggest that y’all get married yesterday. Just remember, spouses can’t incriminate each other. There’s a law against that.”

That’s the second time I’d heard that. The first, I’d thought it was a joke. That Wake really hadn’t thought that far ahead. But, apparently, he had.

Then, without another word, he left.

“I know a guy,” Aodhan said cheerfully.

CHAPTER 21

Don’t build a higher wall. Build a longer table. Or just kill whoever is fucking with your chi. Whatever gets the job done.

-Wake to Dutch

WAKE

I know a guy.

Sage’s advice, paired with Aodhan’s ‘guy’ had us getting married in the courthouse half an hour later.

As in, completely married. No more pretending to play house.

Funny enough, my entire family—all that I had left—made it to the courthouse in time.

My daughter, Danyetta, Aodhan, and Bowie—who was all but ecstatic to see his dad—were all there, along with the rest of my crew—Bain, Etienne—who was indeed out of prison—Davis, and Cassius.

Dutch got married in a pair of cutoff shorts—not the ones I’d defiled earlier—and a black tank top. I got married in a pair of jeans that needed to be retired about fifteen wears ago, a black T-shirt, and a ball cap.

We looked like we were stepping out for a ball game. Not a wedding.

But it worked for us, I guessed.

“Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?” the judge asked.

“I do,” I confirmed.

I more than do.

“And do you, Dutch Panchek, take Wake to be your…”

I zoned out a bit when Dutch’s wide, scared eyes met mine. She looked terrified as if she was making the biggest decision of her life.

I reached for her hand and brought it to my lips, interrupting the judge when I said quietly, “I’ll always take care of you.”

As in, I’ll take care of you, even at the peril of my own freedom.

Her shoulders slumped as if she read the sincerity in my words and the underlying meaning behind them.

“I do,” Dutch replied softly.

“Then, by the power invested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss…”

I was kissing her before he told me I could. Because, like all things in life, I did what I wanted, and paid the consequences later.

Though, there were no consequences here.

“Damn, boss,” I heard Bain say. “There are children present.”

He was right. Bowie was making ‘ewww’ sounds, while my daughter giggled.

God, she was damn cute.

I hadn’t heard or seen that giggle in a very long time.

It made my heart even happier.

“Where to now?” I asked as I tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear.

She bit her lip.

Then I heard her stomach growl.

I pulled away while laughing. “Let’s go find something to eat.”

I glared down the table at Dayden—call me Dayd, sir—and wondered if he thought I was born yesterday.

“Dude, chill,” I heard my sister say under her breath. “They’re just holding hands.”

“He’s holding her hand while his is in his lap. Next to his dick,” I corrected her. “I’m not stupid. I know where this is going.”

“This is going in a naturally healthy direction,” I heard Dutch, my wife—holy fuckin’ shit—say. “Imagine this. If they both weren’t supremely comfortable, and felt safe in their environment, if they hadn’t grown and matured into healthy child-adults, then they wouldn’t be able to do this, right here, right now. Just think, could you imagine even a year after it happened?”

Well fuck. She took the wind right out of my sails.

“No,” Danyetta and I said at the same time. “She was catatonic at first,” I said. “I’m talking, she barely would even look me in the eye. God forbid any other man come close to her. Not that I can blame her, but no. I couldn’t imagine this when it was just a year later. She’s done a lot of growing.”

“You did that.” She leaned forward and looked me in the eye for a long moment before reaching for a chip that was in the middle of the table in a fancy little basket. “You made it safe for her. When she knew she was safe, she healed. Same for Dayden. I know that you don’t like it based solely on the fact that you love your daughter, and want what’s best for her, and think that a teenage boy won’t be it… but she’s healthy, Dad. Be happy that she’s making this step at all.”

Well, when she put it like that, she made me feel stupid for being upset about something innocent like hand-holding.

She bumped my shoulder, then shoved three chips in her mouth smothered in queso, salsa, and guacamole.

“I’m fairly sure that you’re supposed to dip those individually.” Bowie looked at Dutch with a horrified expression.

“Says who?” she asked as she did the multi-dipping thing again. “I have my own jar of salsa, queso, and guac. I’m not hurting anybody. And, just sayin’, but live outside the box, Bowie. Look at you with your boring salsa and your boring tortilla rolled up to dip in that queso. There’s no excitement there. All…” She pointed her finger at him and circled it. “Boringness.”

My lips quirked up into a small smile as Danyetta choked on her salsa.

“Damn, Bow.” Aodhan chuckled. “I think she just pulled your card. You gonna let her call you boring like that?”

“I’m not boring,” Bowie declared. “I play baseball.”

“Baseball is boring. Do you know how long baseball games take? Forever. Now football? That’s exciting. Soccer? Even more exciting. Baseball is just a boring game with boring people walking up to hit a boring ball. There’s no blood or fuss. Have you ever watched a rugby match? Those guys go out there and dance the freakin’ Haka. Then pound into each other. It’s not uncommon for them to get head injuries, and cuts that require stitches. Do you know they just go to the sideline, get some glue smeared on their gaping wounds, and then go on about the game as if they didn’t receive an injury that could/would require six stitches? What can you say about baseball that has any excitement in it?”

Bowie narrowed his eyes at her, causing Aodhan to snort.

Baseball was pretty damn boring. I had to agree with her there.

“Did you know that Uncle Wake played rugby?” Bowie asked curiously. “Is that why you like it so much? I hear it’s the short shorts. I don’t personally see the appeal of short shorts. I’m always afraid my junk is going to fall out of my underwear. Can you imagine how embarrassing it would be for that to happen because you were wearing short shorts? But I do agree with you, rugby is exciting. But baseball is America’s game. That makes you un-American if you don’t like baseball. Are you un-American?”

She turned her head so that she could look at me. “I didn’t know that you played rugby. That’s literally my favorite thing in the world to watch.” She narrowed her eyes and studied me for a long time. “What nationality are you? I noticed the dark hair and the dark eyes. You’re tall. And you have the olive skin tone. Are you Maori?”

My lips twitched. “My father was, yes.”

“Have you ever done the Haka before?”

My brows raised. I loved how animated she was right then.

“A time or two,” I answered.

“He’s being very cagey,” Aodhan answered. “Wake’s one of the biggest rugby stars our country has ever produced. Even if he did cut his career short before he went on to play professionally. Their granddad taught them how to play from a very young age. That’s why they’re so rich. Their grandfather was a famous rugby player in New Zealand. Though, he’s also a real estate mogul, just like his grandfather was. I’m not sure which one made him richer.”

I watched her eyes narrow. “You played rugby?”

The entire table went silent.

“I played rugby in high school for a private school. Then college. And got a pretty lucrative deal for a year overseas. However, it wasn’t something that I intended to do for the entirety of my life, so I quit. It just wasn’t as fun when it wasn’t for ‘fun.’ If that makes any sense.”

“What, have you been living under a rock?” Etienne drawled. “Geez, Cher. Look at the house he owns. There’s about ten more of them he runs with pocket change. Not to mention, he practically owns half of Accident. If not more than half. That farm you bought used to be his, too. Didn’t you notice how easy it came up for sale?”

That’s when her eyes narrowed down to teeny, tiny slits.

“I see,” Dutch drawled. “Well, fool me once.”

“I didn’t fool you at all,” I said carefully, unable to read her mood. “I just wanted to make things easier for you.”

What I didn’t say was that I wanted to make sure that she could do what she needed to safely. And with as little fanfare as possible. I wanted to make it easier for her to kill a man. So, sue me.

“Don’t feel bad,” Bowie chimed in again. “Uncle Wake is a very private person. The people at this table are the only ones who know anything about him. You’ll get there. I mean, he married you. That has to mean something.”

“Does it now?” Dutch flagged down the waitress. “Can you get me a margarita? Extra shot of tequila?”

The waitress gave her a thumbs up and walked away, heading straight to the bartender.

When she came back moments later with the margarita and handed it to Dutch, she had a quarter of it gone before she even set it down on the table completely.

Nobody spoke as they realized that something had been said to piss the bride off.

My daughter was looking at me funny because she’d missed half the conversation, being so obsessed with her new ‘beau’ that she’d been too preoccupied to listen in.

Once she’d gotten a good swallow, she reached for the tortillas, rolled one up into a roll, then dipped the entire thing in queso before shoving half of it in her mouth.

We all watched, trying not to look obvious.

I leaned back in my chair and said, “What’s going on with your practice? What’s the timeline looking like on that? Etienne has a lot off the bay that you could probably use.”

Dutch raised her brows at me, then turned to Etienne. “What do you do?”

Cassius, realizing I needed a rescue, flashed a grin at me before answering. “Etienne owns a construction business. However, I’m cooler. I’m a harbor pilot.”

“I’ve heard about those,” she said. “They’re boat drivers that board other people’s ships and guide them through dangerous or crowded areas, right?”

He nodded. “That’s right. Pretty much, some areas are so violent and dangerous that it’s best for a very experienced person to navigate so they don’t crash. Our channel is one of the most dangerous in the world. You’ll find our channel all over YouTube.”

“Is that something that people need?” she asked, picking up her glass and taking another healthy swallow of her drink.

“Yes and no,” he answered. “If they’re not from here, yes. If they are? No, not generally. But on violent days, even the most experienced want pilots like me to take over.”

“Why do you know so much about this?” she asked curiously.

Our dinner came out after that, and Bowie, Cassius, and Dutch spoke quietly about his job, while I spoke with Aodhan about getting my bike back the next morning.

Bain, who’d been awfully quiet until then, said, “You pissed her off.”

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye before saying, “Oh, yeah. I know.”

His lips quirked up. “You obviously knew that was going to happen.”

“I knew,” I confirmed.

“She’ll get over it,” he predicted.

I had no doubt she’d get over it.

I liked the attitude, and I liked even more that she was pissed as hell right then. That’d make her all the more entertaining to take to bed later.

What I hadn’t expected was to have to deal with an abuser trying to raise his hand to my daughter, and me having to beat the living shit out of someone.

But, there was a first time for everything.

Get married. Get in a fight. Go to jail.

For an actual good reason this time.

CHAPTER 22

I love hard. But I don’t give a shit even harder.

-Dutch to Wake

DUTCH

I was pissed.

I didn’t know why I was pissed, I just knew that I was.

Was it because I’d learned that he’d somehow instigated the sale of his property for me to buy? A place that would be perfect to not only kill a man, but hide his dead body on?

Or was I upset that I’d married a man that I knew absolutely nothing about?

Honestly, at this point, I didn’t really know why I was mad. I just knew that I was.

Which was why, when I came back from the bathroom, I nearly missed the man that was practically leaning over his table whispering vehemently in his date’s ear.

Nearly.

When he reached forward, causing a flash of white in my peripheral vision, and caught his date’s face in his hand, I didn’t stop myself from purposefully running into his chair.

“Sorry,” I called as I continued past, heading back to my seat.

Wake, who’d seen me come and go, placed his hand on my bare thigh as I regained my seat.

“You ready to go?” he rasped.

There was no underlying message in his words.

He was truly asking if I was okay, and if I wanted to leave, obviously sensing my anger at him.

“No,” I answered. “Since my husband is rich and all, I think I’ll have another one of those expensive margaritas.”

He snorted, causing me to kind of sort of smile at him in response.

But there was a loud crash, followed by a “You did that on purpose.”

All of us turned at the same time to see the man that I’d purposefully bumped earlier on my way past leaning over Lolo’s chair and all but yelling at her where she was now lying on the ground.

I never even saw Wake move.

One second, he was looking at me, and the next he was charging the man that had upended his daughter out of her chair.

He took two large strides across the floor, then his fist was raised and he did this karate thing and launched his fist at the man’s face.

The man went down hard but popped back up as if he hadn’t been hit at all.

He picked up the chair, swung it at Wake, and Wake blocked it just in time, narrowly saving his face.

Wake tried to take the chair from him but only ended up breaking off one of the wooden legs.

Which he then used to shove hard into the man’s sternum as he took another swing at Wake’s head.

It was at this point that I launched myself out of the seat, covered Lolo’s and now Dayden’s body with my own, just in time for the chair to come down hard across my back.

I cried out in pain, feeling the sting of the force rattle through my entire body before a low, throbbing thrum took root in my soul that emanated from my back.

I swallowed hard as nausea swelled in my throat.

A loud grunt, followed by a body hitting the floor, was proceeded with utter and complete silence.

Not a single sound could be heard in the entire restaurant.

Not from the other diners. Not from the girlfriend of the dude I now realized had fallen against the tiles by my head. And not from the man that I could now feel smoothing his hand up my back.

I hissed as he touched a particularly tender spot, then lifted up.

Dayden followed suit, and together we all stared down at Lolo who was looking on with the widest eyes I’d ever seen.

“You okay?” I breathed.

She licked her lips nervously before saying, “Yes. Perfectly. He just dumped me out of my seat. I landed on the floor, he started yelling, Dad got up, and then Dayden was covering me.”

Dayden was looking at Wake with hero-worship in his eyes.

I chose that moment to look up at Wake, who was staring down at us all, his eyes a mask of blankness that scared me.

“You okay?” Wake asked me.

Was I?

Possibly.

“The cops have been called,” I heard someone announce.

The lady that’d seated us.

“While you’re doing the cop thing,” I heard Bain drawl. “I’ll just go ahead and call Sage to meet us down at the station. You know Graydon won’t let this one go without capitalizing on the opportunity.”

He wasn’t lying about that.

Within ten minutes, Graydon was there.

Within fifteen, without questioning anyone at all, Graydon was marching Wake out the door in handcuffs—leaving, might I add, the man that’d started this entire thing to begin with.

“Don’t think you’re off the hook,” Aodhan said. “We’ll take care of you our own way.”

“That’s illegal,” the man hissed, backing away and reaching for his girlfriend.

The girlfriend that Etienne had helped out at some point by handing her a stack of hundred-dollar bills and told her to call an Uber.

“She’s gone,” Etienne supplied. “Hopefully, far, far away from you and your crazy ass.”

“I’ll find her,” the man growled.

I snatched my purse and keys up, then started walking out behind Wake.

I watched as the sheriff roughly shoved him into his cruiser.

Wake went, very compliantly, and rolled his eyes the moment our gazes made eye contact across the parking lot.

Graydon slammed the door closed hard, a look of pure evilness on his face when he rounded the hood of his cruiser. When he got in, he purposefully took off too fast, hoping to throw Wake into the glass. But he didn’t accomplish his goal, and only accomplished over correcting and nearly flipping the whole damn vehicle.

Wake did hit the glass then, unable to stop his body from moving due to sheer centrifugal force alone.

His face hit the window, and that’s when I realized that Wake might’ve been the one to blow up today, but had I been alone, it could’ve just as easily been me.

Anger burned in the pit of my stomach, hot and violent.

Slamming my car door closed behind me, I sped to the police station, passed the sheriff, and took a side road that would lead me directly where I wanted to go.

When I got there, it was in time to see Sage stepping out of his car.

“Whoa,” he said when he saw my face. “Everything okay?”

“I want documentation of every single cut, bruise and scrape on his body before this night is over,” I growled. “And I want to sue the fuck out of that piece of shit.”

Sage’s eyes glowed. “Turns out, I’m really good at suing.”

He fuckin’ better be.

Crossing my arms over my chest, I waited with impatience for Graydon to show with my husband.

When he arrived, ten minutes later, Wake was looking quite angry, Graydon looked like a kid with his favorite toy in reach, and was barely paying any attention to where he was going. IE, he nearly ran over me.

If Sage hadn’t grabbed me and forced me backward, behind the brick wall that housed the damn trash cans for the department, I would’ve been run right over.

Graydon didn’t even notice as he got out of the car.

“You know,” Sage snapped. “People usually look where they’re going when they try to find a parking spot. Not to mention, they tend to make sure not to park on sidewalks of any kind.”

Graydon looked confused as he rounded the car to see what Sage was talking about.

He got there, shrugged, and then went to Wake’s back door.

“I highly suggest you take those off him,” Sage told the sheriff evenly. “Or we’ll file charges, right here and now, for police brutality.”

“You could try,” Graydon challenged.

Wake clenched his fists, and I could tell that he was losing patience.

“I don’t know if you noticed, but the man you left behind—the one Wake saved a girl and his daughter from—got pissed and started wrecking the restaurant. I’m sure you got quite a few calls on it by now. How many of those have you ignored, trying to fight some vendetta against Wake?”

That whole trashing the restaurant was a complete guess. He’d looked like he was ready to break things before I left. It was an educated guess, but one that seemed to hold water when I saw the guilty look flash across Graydon’s face.

“My deputies have it handled,” he tried.

“Your deputies, as of today, have gone from six to two. Because of poor working environment, and a lack of a competent leader,” Sage surprised us by saying. “As of right now, I don’t think there’s anyone inside to even process this farce of an arrest you have going on here.”

Graydon’s face flamed cherry red as if he knew that we were right.

He ground his teeth, then reluctantly yanked Wake around by his wrists.

Which pissed me off all over again.

I marched forward, my intent I didn’t know, and took two steps toward Graydon when he whipped around and pointed his gun straight at my face.

Wake’s hands, which were partially uncuffed from Graydon removing one of them, flew into the air.

One knocking Graydon’s gun hand up. And the other pushing me once again behind the brick wall.

When I peeked from behind it only to have Sage blocking me with his body, it was to see Wake and Graydon facing off.

“This shit is getting really fuckin’ old, Graydon,” Wake hissed as he rubbed his reopened abrasions on his raw wrists, my guess, to keep from wrapping them around Graydon’s throat. “You know that guy had six priors? As in, beating his wife and children to the point where they needed to be hospitalized. But you’re going to arrest me for protecting my kid and my wife, whom might I add got hit across the back with a goddamn chair. Yet, you stand there and say that you support the right side of justice? Let me give you a newsflash, dumbass. You’re a piece of shit, and everyone’s starting to see it.”

I’d seen him angry before. At least, I’d thought I had.

But then I’d seen him like he was at dinner tonight, and I realized that maybe I didn’t know my husband all that well at all.

“Wake,” I said softly, trying to emerge from behind Sage. “Come on. Let’s go,” I urged. “I’m ready to go to bed.”

Graydon put his gun up, which caused Sage to relax.

I moved so that I could see Wake’s face just as he said, “And if you ever, and I mean ever, point your gun at my wife again, you’ll not have to worry about whether or not you’re a good sheriff anymore. I’ll make the decision for you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Graydon moved forward intimidatingly. “Is that a threat?”

“That’s not a threat, old man,” Wake said. “That’s my promise to my wife. Nothing will ever put her in danger. Not even a man posing as the law.”

With that, he held out his hand for me.

I took it and crowded in close to him.

Wake’s hands clamped around my hip, then he pushed me toward my vehicle.

Before I could ask if he wanted to drive, he pulled the keys from my hands and said over his shoulder, “Sage, thanks for showing up. Whatever you and my girl were talking about in the parking lot when we pulled in, go ahead and follow through with that.”

How did he know we’d been talking about something?

I waited until we were in the car with the doors shut before I asked him.

“I saw the fierceness on your face,” he answered. “You looked ready to do battle when we pulled in. I just assumed it was something to do with Graydon.”

“I told him I wanted a lawsuit against the sheriff for brutality and whatever else he can find to pin on the moron,” I grumbled darkly.

“Put on your belt, darlin’,” he urged. “I might drive easy, and this might be the smallest Florida town in creation, but shit still happens. I don’t want one of those things to happen to you.”

That was the sweetest thing I’d ever heard.

When we got home, I let Tex out for his nightly walk around the property while Wake made phone calls to his family.

After assuring them he was fine, he joined me in my short jaunt around the house toward the water.

“Don’t go in the water, Tex,” Wake ordered the moment that he saw where his dog was headed.

I couldn’t help the small giggle that escaped me as I watched Tex give Wake a look. One that clearly said what he thought about Wake not allowing him to go for a short swim.

I wouldn’t have let it happen, either. But I was glad Wake was on the receiving end of Tex’s doggy glare.

Wake shook his head as Tex finally looked back toward the water, sitting down on his cute, chubby little butt and giving Wake the cold shoulder.

“You really think that’s funny?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I think it’s cute that your dog’s surprised you told him no, yes. I think it’s even cuter that you… mmmph.”

Wake’s lips landed on mine. One second. Two. Five. Ten.

I leaned into his kiss, melting into his body and giving him nearly all of my weight as I all but threw myself into the best kiss of my life.

His tongue dueled with mine, playing. Teasing. Licking. Then nipping and soft curses leaving his lips.

When he finally pulled back he said, “I won’t allow Graydon to hurt you.”

I snorted. “Graydon is inconsequential to me. If I have my way, he won’t even be doing his job for very much longer. He’ll be gone quicker than he can arrest you again. Now, the real worry is, once his authority is stripped away, what will he do to you as punishment?”

Wake’s lips tipped up at the edges as he pulled me closer.

I barely held back a wince as he touched a particularly tender spot from my back meeting the wrong end of a chair.

Wake didn’t notice because it was during our preoccupation with each other that Tex decided now was his chance.

In a flash, he was hopping right off the dock.

I threw my head back and laughed.

CHAPTER 23

We’re all brave in our own way. For instance, I’m not afraid of raw cookie dough.

-Dutch to Wake

DUTCH

It was my wedding night, and we were officially inside the house with a very grouchy Tex lying on the floor in the kitchen where Wake had banished him.

“Wow.” I snickered. “He’s really mad at you.”

“He doesn’t get to sleep on the hardwood floors when he’s soaking wet. He’ll just have to deal with the tile floor in the kitchen. Which is why I put it in, because he’s the exact opposite of rational when it comes to the water,” he explained.

He pulled the gate closed that would lock Tex in the kitchen, then gestured to the bedroom.

I licked my lips, avoiding his stare, and caught sight of his raw wrists.

I made a sound in the back of my throat and said, “Go sit down. I need to put some ointment on those wrists. They look really bad.”

Then, without waiting for him to comply, I headed to the bathroom where I assumed there was a first aid kit.

I didn’t find one, which caused him to laugh from the other room.

“They’re actually in the closet behind you. Big box. Nothing fancy like a kit. I’m a bachelor—was a bachelor. I rarely, if ever, have need of Band-Aids,” he replied.

“You have a daughter,” I countered. “Who, at the time that this stupid box”—I looked at it as dust practically flew off the flaps as I opened the top—“was made, likely scraped herself up a lot.”

The tube had never even been opened, despite the age.

I hoped it was safe to use anyway, and walked back into the bedroom and practically stopped dead at the sight that waited for me.

His legs were spread wide, his shirt was off, and he was sitting on the edge of the bed looking mad at the world.

Which, I realized, he had a very big right to be.

His wide, muscular shoulders were thrown back, and his hands were planted on the bed behind him as he leaned back, displaying his perfect chest and abs.

I’d never seen a set of abs before. Other than the few times I’d gotten peeks at Wake’s.

But now, with him posed as he was, I could see those little rib indentions that looked like fish gills to me. He also had that line that went from his outer hips to disappear into his pants.

And what a well-defined line it was.

I wanted to walk that line with my fingers before ripping his pants off and having my way with him.

“Ointment?” he growled.

I looked up to find his thousand-yard stare down with the wall gone, and only a heated, well-amused one replacing it.

“Yeah.” I jumped and started for him. “Give one to me.”

He did, leaving the other one planted backward in the bed to hold himself up.

I took my time smearing ointment that I hoped wouldn’t kill him because it was so far out of date, onto the top of his wrist. Then moved on to the underside.

I stopped when I got to the tattoo that’d always intrigued me.

It was a ‘Death’ Tarot card. Around the card, it said: Vengeance is easy. For her, I’ll face the consequences.

I knew what it meant: he’d kill again. Over and over again. If it was in defense of his little girl.

“You know,” he said quietly, bringing me out of my study of his tattoo. “At one point in time while I was doing time for those murders, I thought to myself, ‘I’ll only do it for her.’”

My brows rose as I gestured for him to give me his other hand.

He did as he explained his words. “But then I met you.”

My heart started to race as I smeared the stuff all over his wrist, being a whole lot less precise this time due to my shaking hands.

“And I realized that my easy little world was about to change. And not because I was getting out of jail,” he said. “The moment I met you in that prison, I knew that I wanted to make you mine.”

I licked my lips as I twisted the cap back on the tube.

When I went to turn around, to put it where it went, he caught my hand and pulled me until I was splayed on top of him in the bed, him down on his back.

His gaze was even more intense as he stared at me from so close.

“I never meant to not hide my past,” he explained. “And I never meant to make you upset by selling you my land. But I wanted to make life easier for you, not harder. So… that counts, right?”

I laughed.

Then I did what I told myself I wouldn’t.

I forgave him. Then I kissed him.

Things got a little rambunctious after that.

Clothes departed our bodies at an alarming rate—I should’ve asked him how he got so good at removing women’s clothes but decided against it. The less I knew about his previous sex life, the better.

Mind thoroughly in the present, I moaned when his mouth went to my neck, his tongue drawing a line from my collarbone to my jawline.

When he got to my jawline, he nipped it with his teeth.

“My turn,” he growled.

I was slightly confused because he was rolling me off of him, but turning me in such a way that he could inspect my back.

“Your turn… what?” I asked.

Damn, I didn’t have the brainpower to think past the feeling that was traveling through my veins.

“Your turn to get inspected,” he said. “Don’t think that I forgot.”

Then he was shucking my shirt off my head unceremoniously. There was nothing sexy in the way he did it at all.

“Fuck,” he hissed as he saw what was likely bruising.

“Is it bad?” I asked.

It felt tender, that was for sure.

Tomorrow, I’d likely be sore as hell.

“It’s not good,” he rumbled from behind me. “Unbutton your pants.”

I did, and he stripped my jean shorts off moments later, leaving me in a bra and my thong.

“Yeah, it’s gonna hurt something fierce tomorrow.” He trailed his finger down the length of my spine.

I knew that it wasn’t meant to be sexual, but when he touched me, my body had a mind of its own.

“Gonna have a doozy of a bruise here,” he said as he stopped right above my tailbone. “Fuckin’ fuck. If I could kill him, and get away with it right now, I might.”

He might.

That made me smile as I went from flat on my belly to up on my knees, with my ass high in the air.

“How about we stop worrying about what tomorrow will bring, and instead do right now. Because I really need to get to bed because I have to work tomorrow bright and early,” I said.

“You just said we shouldn’t worry about tomorrow,” he countered as he smoothed his hands over the globes of my ass.

When his hands encountered the fabric of my thong, he hooked his hands into the flimsy material and yanked.

I gasped when they went from on my body to falling in a pool of useless fabric between my legs.

“Wake!” I cried. “Those were really expensive!”

As in, a hundred bucks that I’d bought just for him, expensive.

“I’ll replace them,” he said.

I felt the heat of his breath on my ass when he slid his head between my legs.

“Drop down to sit on my face,” he ordered.

I bit my lip, dropped my head so that I could see what he was doing, and sat there sort of stunned at what I saw.

His shoulders were butted up against the backs of my thighs, and my shins were draped over his muscular biceps.

“Wake, no!” I tried to crawl away, but he moved so that his arms were around my waist, locking me in place with very little effort.

Then, I was sitting on his face.

Literally, all of my weight was on my folded legs and his face.

I gasped, my hands going down to the first thing I could find purchase in—his hair—and stilled.

“Wake, I’m too heavy.” I tried to control the worry, but it wasn’t helping.

“Baby,” he said between licks. “I’d rather suffocate between your thighs than die any other way. Now let me enjoy myself.”

He proceeded to do that.

Thoroughly.

When I fell over onto my back long minutes later, after an orgasm that took my breath away, I didn’t even notice the pain.

What I did notice was the tightness of Wake’s pants, which he promptly stripped off.

Then, standing there in all his naked glory, he took me in with a satisfied look in his eyes.

“Damn, baby,” he said as he crawled back onto the bed. “Satisfaction looks good on you.”

I didn’t think that I could take anymore.

Honestly, I didn’t.

But then he was situating himself behind me, me once again on my knees, and sliding inside.

I closed my eyes as my hands clenched on the bedspread underneath me.

The first long glide of his cock inside of me felt like magic.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I breathed into the comforter.

He chuckled, keeping his thrusts slow as he effortlessly fucked me. Nice and sweet.

There was no aggression whatsoever in his lovemaking today.

Only straight control.

At least until the end, when he started to fuck me faster.

I closed my eyes as I let the strokes take me over.

Higher and higher I went until I felt myself start to tighten around him.

“Thank fuck,” he growled as I felt him tense as well.

Then we were coming, together as one.

His hands tightened on my hips, and my eyes squeezed shut so tightly that I saw stars.

The grunt that left his mouth had my lips curving up into a small smile.

“One day,” he said, “this’ll probably settle down to the point where I don’t come in two seconds like a teenager. But for now… I’m gonna live it the fuck up.”

He collapsed to the side, bringing me with him.

“Gotta get up and pee,” I said softly.

He let me go, and I went to clean up.

When I came back, he was under the covers.

When I got close, he lifted them up, and I crawled in beside him.

When I was comfortable on the pillow beside him, he laughed, then tugged me closer to him.

“Here. In my arms. That’s where you sleep from now on,” he ordered like the alpha male that he was.

I snorted. “You’re too hot.”

“I’m just right,” he countered.

Then I went and proved him right by falling asleep moments later.

CHAPTER 24

Is fucktastrophy a legitimate word yet? Because I feel like that would be a legitimate one to bring up to Webster for his dictionary.

-Wake to Bain

WAKE

Three days later, I had a houseful of kids and the promise of ‘I’ll be back soon’ from Danyetta.

Honestly, I highly doubted that.

She thought she was being sneaky, but I knew the score.

She was seeing Aodhan again and didn’t want me, nor Bowie, to know.

Well, that was completely fine with me.

What wasn’t fine with me was her getting hurt.

Therefore, I would be talking to Aodhan again.

He wouldn’t share that I knew, but he would understand where I stood. Which was all that mattered.

The additional kids meant more food needed, so, the grocery store it was. I could practically hear the kids chattering up a storm from a few aisles over, so I headed in that direction.

I turned the corner onto the detergent aisle to see a girl with a bottle of Tide up to her mouth, chugging it back like she was thirsty and that bottle of Tide was the only thing going to quench her thirst.

I stopped and stared, open-mouthed, as she finally looked over and realized that she had company.

Upon seeing the look on my face, she said, “I was going to pay for it! I swear!”

I blinked a few times before saying, “I can assure you, that was the last thing in the world that I was worried about.”

Movement over her shoulder caught my eye, and I saw the psychiatrist staring at the woman with a look of horror herself.

My little psychiatrist.

My wife.

“Dutch,” I said quietly.

Dutch’s head whipped around, and she was so horrified by what she’d just seen that it was apparent from the look on her face.

I couldn’t help but laugh.

But my girl? Well, she had a soft heart, and she was a fixer.

“Are you okay?” Dutch asked the woman.

The woman broke down and cried. Cried like she was losing the best thing in the world.

“I’m pregnant, and I just want it to go away!”

That’s when I focused on the girl’s age. She had to be all of fourteen or fifteen.

“Oh, honey,” Dutch said softly, then handed her a card out of her pocket. “Stop what you’re doing, because that’ll just harm you in the long run. Which you don’t want to do. Call my office manager and set up an appointment, we can discuss plans. In the meantime, we should call an ambulance to get your stomach checked out.”

The girl took the card, looked up into Dutch’s eyes, and then threw herself at her.

After a hard and fast hug that still had the ability to make my heart race because I knew that Dutch was still hurting, the girl ran.

“Well, that was awkward,” I admitted.

“I don’t even know what to say,” she agreed. “I… that’s… I don’t know.”

I snorted out a laugh and then said, “You pretty much summed up everything that was processed in mine as well.”

“Dad!” Lolo cried from the next aisle over. “How about some sundaes!”

We moseyed back to the correct aisle hand in hand, me feeling like a fool for not finding this happy months ago.

When we got there, I found a buggy that only slightly pulled to the left, and followed behind.

I looked at the box of waffle cone bowls already in her hand, as well as the chocolate syrup and whipped cream in Dayden’s.

Then I shrugged. “You know you could just make your own chocolate syrup at home with maple syrup and cocoa, right?”

“No way!” Bowie cried. “That’s not how you make that!”

“That’s exactly how you make that,” I countered.

Bowie threw his spoils into the cart, then pulled out his phone to fact-check me.

The non-believing little shit.

“Holy shit, you’re right!” he cried.

I was.

We’d grown up rich, but my family had definitely hated having bad shit in the house. Sometimes, you had to get creative if you were craving something your parents refused to buy you.

“Ruh-roh,” I heard Bowie grumble.

“What?” Lolo asked. “What is…” She trailed off, her eyes getting this terrified look of stark terror on her face. I looked around for the reason for that terror and found it at the end of the aisle.

“Oh,” I said quietly.

“What?” Dutch asked desperately. “What is it?”

I gestured toward my ex-wife and my brother with a tilt of my head.

That was one thing I’d managed not to do all that often, despite us living in the same town.

Running into them was few and far between, and even when I did, I was able to avoid it almost completely. And never had we done it with Lolo in tow.

But, Amber being Amber, she acted like she was the hurt one in the situation.

“Oh, my baby!” Amber cried.

From what Danyetta had said, she’d gotten better since she was younger on seeing Amber—and Keir—but it still wasn’t a comfortable meeting when they ran into each other.

And I saw that firsthand as Lolo practically hid behind Dutch.

I would’ve smiled at the action that Dutch took—puffing up her chest and widening her arms, while at the same time pulling the cart in front of her to protect her from the side—but Amber was upon us.

“Who are you?” Amber asked accusingly, glaring at Dayden, who was all but pinning Lolo to Dutch’s back.

It was obvious that she hadn’t seen Dutch, but that took about two point five seconds before she said, “And who are you?”

I moved in until Dutch was at my side, and the only way to reach Lolo was to bypass me, the cart, and then Dayden.

“I’m Dutch Westfield.” Dutch smiled. “And who are you?”

Dutch Westfield.

It’d been three days since I’d made her mine officially, and this was the first time that I’d heard my name tacked on to the end of hers.

Holy shit, I liked how that made me feel.

I was so focused on that feeling that I missed the first part of Amber’s tirade.

Keir, who was looking on with a lot of indecision written plain on his face, said, “Darlin’, this isn’t the time or place.”

“This is the perfect time to talk to someone who is now going to be near my daughter one hundred percent of the time. I might not have her at home with me because of extenuating circumstances, but I sure the hell can know what’s going on in her life.”

For the most part, Amber was right. She did deserve to know what was going on in her daughter’s life. But that was only if she showed even the most minute amount of desire to know that shit any other time than when she was being witnessed in public.

She didn’t ask about her from day to day. Didn’t call Lolo. Didn’t text. Didn’t send her birthday gifts. She was just a person to my girl, and not even a good one.

Hell, I was able to show more of an interest in her life when I was in prison. And that was when someone was controlling my every move.

Which was why I didn’t feel bad for Amber.

Two-way road, and all that jazz.

“Well,” I said quietly. “It is and it isn’t. You have to show that you give a shit, and I haven’t seen you do that anywhere outside of when you’re being observed in public.” I paused. “I’ve been out for a while now, and Lolo hasn’t told me you’ve tried to contact her once.”

That wasn’t something that Amber wanted to hear.

Which was why she started to push.

“Get ‘em out of here, Dutch,” I said softly as I handed her my keys.

Dutch took the keys, Lauren’s hand, and then hustled them out of the aisle the opposite way of Amber.

Amber’s eyes practically glowed for about ten seconds. Then she wilted.

Her face completely lost the anger, and then she was crying.

“You know I can’t have any more kids?” she said between hiccuping sobs. “My only one that I could have, I broke. My own brother…” She covered her face with her hands. “And she fuckin’ hates me.”

“Baby,” Keir said softly, curling his hand around her face.

The anger that I should’ve felt at the situation wasn’t there.

Instead, I felt a boatload of guilt.

Her crying got louder as she buried her face in her hands.

By that point, we’d garnered all the attention of the store.

Every last one of them that hadn’t been watching the scene take place—gotta love small towns—were now paying a hell of a lot of attention due to the volume of Amber’s cries.

I looked at the basket of food, then remembered my talk with the kids earlier about how horrible pizza and candy from the gas station was—and decided that was what I would have to do.

With one last parting comment of, “You should try more than you do,” I left, not looking back.

None of the citizens of Accident, Florida, looked at me poorly as I left. They looked at me like I’d hung the moon, which, for some, I might have. I’d cleared out a whole lot of trash before I’d been locked away.

Why so many pedophiles had been in our area without my knowledge, I didn’t know. But you can rest assured that from now on, there would be a tight regulation on who did and didn’t get to live here near our kids.

“Have a good day, dear,” the oldest cashier on the planet said.

She’d been at the Frog Den—the only grocery store in Accident—since I could walk.

She’d seen me many a time from all stages of life—coming in sick with my mom for fever medicine when I was a kid, to coming in late in high school for a box of condoms, finally to my later years for formula or diapers for Lolo when she’d been small—and I liked her.

“Have a good night, Mrs. Wilks.” I nodded my head to her.

When I got out to the parking lot, I didn’t have a freaking out teenager like I fully expected.

Instead, I saw her grinning and laughing at something Dutch was saying.

Dutch, whose back was to me, so she didn’t see me come up.

“…stole a fifteen-pound brisket, and that old lady called me out like I actually would’ve tried to conceal it. It was on the bottom of my basket! I couldn’t see it through all of my groceries. I certainly would’ve tried to hide it better had I been trying to steal it. She picked it up and nearly slapped me with it. I’m not sure I like her all that much,” Dutch grumbled.

“Mrs. Wilks has twelve kids, and has been working there since before I was born,” I said, causing her to jump and turn. “She’s old and set in her ways, and loves her store. She won’t hold it against you. I destroyed her flower display outside once and thought she was going to kill me. It took her six months to smile at me again.”

Dutch grinned at me. “Everything okay?”

I sighed as I held up my empty hands. “I guess pizza and candy from the gas station it is.”

“Yay!” Lolo clapped.

I pinned my gaze on her and studied her for a few seconds.

“You’re okay?” I asked.

She shrugged. “It gets easier and easier to see them. Her. But I still get this minor freakout when it happens, as if I’m going to somehow end up in a situation I can’t handle. I know it hurts her, but I can’t control my reactions.”

I pulled her into my chest and pressed a kiss against her head.

Her hair got stuck in my beard as I pulled away.

I spit it out of my mouth, and she laughed as she smoothed it all back down.

“One day, when you’re feeling really strong, I want you to consider the fact that you’re gonna want your mom there for something. Or maybe wish that you had her there and that you’d given it a chance. I don’t want you doing anything you don’t want to do, but I also don’t want you to get to be my age and wonder what if. Just give it a long, hard thought. But also know that if you need anything, Dutch is more than willing to give that to you, too, if you don’t think you can hack it. Okay?” I cupped the side of her face, sweeping my thumb over the rise of her cheekbone.

Damn, when had she grown up on me?

She inhaled deeply, then noisily breathed out. “I was just talking to Dutch about that. She said that she would help me if I wanted it. And… I might. I just might.”

Proud of my baby girl, I gestured toward the truck. “Get your asses in. We have pizza and candy to get, and a movie to watch.”

Lolo smiled.

Then they all piled in.

Later that night, after a movie, and after the kids went outside looking for frogs—something Bowie desperately wanted the two older kids to do with him—I was sitting on the couch with Dutch.

“You good?” I asked her.

Today had been a lot.

Three kids unexpectedly had even surprised me.

When Lolo had told me that she wanted to come over with Dayden and Bowie to watch a movie and to hang out and spend the night, I’d been all over it.

I’d been hesitant at first to say yes, because Dutch was still adjusting to life with me. I should’ve known that she would do just fine with them.

She got up at my answer and went to the kitchen.

“I’m great. Why?” she asked.

“I just threw three kids at you unexpectedly on the second night of our marriage that I had to force you into. I…”

She snorted, causing me to stop talking.

“Just sayin’, but you didn’t force me into anything. I’m a big girl, and willingly said those vows.” She closed the freezer and came out with a bag of frozen peas.

I frowned at her as she came back to the couch, sat down, then ripped a hole into the side of the bag.

Then, she slowly started to crunch away on them.

I looked on in utter fascination.

“Is that something you do often?” I asked curiously.

She looked over at me, then at where my gaze was directed.

“Uh, kind of?” she hedged. “You know, we have something in common, me and you.” She gestured toward my carrots and ranch dressing. “This is actually something that I used to do when I was small. Kind of a comfort thing at this point. My dad didn’t allow us to keep anything sweet in the house, or snacky. Like yours. So this is what I used to snack on when I was hungry.”

“That’s completely fucked up,” I admitted. “No snacks at all?”

Even the healthy person that I was, I still had snacks in the house.

“None,” she said. “You probably know what I’m talking about since you knew how to make chocolate syrup.”

I scrunched up my nose. “I do. Did.” I shrugged. “It started out differently. My mom was great. My dad was around. Then shit went south. They all changed for the worse, and suddenly we were the ones suffering from it.”

Before I could say anything else, explain, my phone rang.

I looked at the readout from where it was sitting on the coffee table and reached for it.

“Bain,” I said quietly. “What’s up?”

“You need to get down to the school,” he ordered. “Aodhan and I are here, and we have some shit that you might want to see.”

CHAPTER 25

Don’t stop, get it, get it.

-Motivational Quote of the Day

WAKE

I didn’t know what I’d encounter when I got to the school, but it definitely wasn’t a Tasmanian Devil of a little kid, being restrained by his shirt scruff at the back of his neck, swinging wildly at Bain.

Bain stayed out of range, but barely.

“Oh, shit,” my wife, who refused to stay at home, said as she rushed forward. “Pedro!”

Pedro, the kid she’d told me about that was being abused by Graydon’s sister, stilled.

He turned, saw Dutch, and then broke down into tears.

I took much slower steps toward them, my eyes taking everything in from the crowbar at Bain’s feet, to the shattered glass of the school’s front door, to the way Bain looked disgusted. Definitely not with the kid, though. With something else.

“What’s going on?” I asked as my boots crunched on the glass underneath my feet.

Bain’s eyes shifted from Dutch and Pedro to me, and a look of utter fury rolled into his eyes.

“What’s going on is,” Bain said, “he was trying to burn down the school.”

My brows rose, and Dutch’s breath hissed in.

“What?” she asked, pulling back from Pedro. “Pedro, why would you do that?”

“I was transferred out of her class,” Pedro said so quietly that I could barely hear him. “But she still came. Asked for me to come to her class. A lot. I refused, and I got in trouble with the principal for it. I did what you said! I was never alone with her again! But she tried. She tried, and she tried, and she tried. And… I don’t know!”

Anger started to roll through my own veins.

I’d been looking into Annalise Graydon. But it was like looking for a rat inside a house that was protected by a king rat. It was hard to find a goddamn thing on her, and I had quite a few men on her already.

Maybe it was time to hire outside help. The kind of help only another ex-con could provide.

“Okay,” I said quietly. “Kid, you’re gonna stay home sick for a few days, okay?”

Pedro looked at me like he couldn’t believe his ears. “But I have perfect attendance.”

I snorted. “You’re easier to control than the teacher we’re looking into. If you’re not there, I don’t have to worry about keeping you safe and finding information on her.”

“What about a homeschooling thing?” she asked. “If you’re sick, we’ll say with the flu, then they’ll likely send you your schoolwork, and count you as here, if you’re able to attend the Skype classes that some of the other kids do. Right?”

That was a new thing I’d heard the school district was doing. Allowing some students to work from home due to an influx in kids attending, without the places to put them.

Actually, Lolo had talked to me about attending the online option for herself a time or two, saying that boys at school were horrible, and making it harder for her to concentrate in class. But that was all before Dayden. Which reminded me, he actually was good for something—keeping her normal, and in school.

“I’ll consider it.” Pedro’s chin jerked up. “But only for a few days. I have friends.”

My lips twitched.

“Bain,” I said. “You got the time, I’d appreciate you utilizing the front door’s new opening. Make sure you have a hood up, though. I remember them saying something about cameras.”

Bain nodded his head in understanding, and together, Dutch and I walked Pedro home the two blocks to his grandmother’s house.

His grandmother answered the door, saw us all, and her eyes went wide.

“Wake Westfield!” she cried. “Why are you out so late, and why is my boy with you?”

I gestured for Pedro to go inside, then said, “Mrs. Cree, will you join us outside for a moment?”

She instantly slammed the door, her arms going over her chest in a defensive position.

I stepped back and allowed Dutch to take over, knowing it would take someone with a gentler touch than my brash bluntness.

When Dutch was done, I saw the rigidness of Mrs. Cree’s shoulders slacken. Then she was crying silent tears.

“I knew it was big, but I didn’t know that it was someone at school, a teacher no less, that was making this so bad for him,” she said with a wobbly voice. “I don’t… I don’t know what to do.”

That’s where I stepped in, telling her she needed to contact the school and have them issue him the online classroom information for him to attend at home for a few weeks.

“We’ll take care of it from here,” I said quietly.

Her eyes studied me long and hard, then she smiled. “I should’ve known that you wouldn’t let this pass.”

“Never,” I hissed. “Never again.”

Because not a single person should have to go through what Lolo went through.

Two days later

“You’re kidding me.”

I looked at the evidence myself and still couldn’t believe my eyes.

“Not kidding,” the private investigator I hired by the name of Hank, a biker that’d just moved to Florida to take over for his ailing brother in their MC, said. “From what I can tell, Graydon’s been a fucked-up person since way before you went to prison for taking care of all those pedophiles. He was pissed because you ‘did the job for him.’ Those were the exact words on his laptop. He was also upset that you were taking out pedophiles, and smug that you’d missed the biggest perv of them all.” He looked at me then instead of the paperwork he was reading off of. “That last comment, the biggest perv of them all, was said by his sister.”

“Any information on her?” I questioned.

Hank shook his head. “Nada. She’s much smarter about hiding her tracks. She’s practically a ghost. But everyone slips up. I only need more time.”

I nodded my head. “I’d like you to anonymously tip off someone in the FBI with this knowledge. Show it to them, see if they run with it. If they don’t, we do things my way again.”

Hank’s cheeks creased with the quick flash of his grin. “I think we should skip the FBI part and just go with your way. Less evidence that way.”

“Actually,” I said, “I’ve had enough interactions with him at this point that I’m the first one they’ll look to. My wife’ll be the second since she’s made no attempt to hide her contempt for the ol’ sheriff, either.”

His smile grew. “I got just the person. But he ain’t FBI. Well, not for much longer, anyway. He has plans to leave soon. He has the connections. Expect someone at your door no later than tonight.”

Then he was gone.

Eight hours later

“I’d like a triple chocolate cake slice”—Dutch flicked her gaze at me to see my reaction—“for an appetizer. Then I’d like the bacon burger with fire fries. A chocolate shake as a drink, with a glass of water, and honey salsa to dip in.”

I coughed as Lolo started to laugh.

“When my mom is on her period, she eats pancakes and french fries. Yours sounds way more bad for you.”

Bowie. Again.

Aodhan, who’d been taking a swig of his beer, nearly choked.

“Bowie!” Danyetta screeched. “That’s none of your business! She could or she couldn’t be. But still, none of your business!”

Bowie held up his hands. “Obviously, you’re about to be…”

That’s when Aodhan placed his hand over Bowie’s mouth as if to stop him from finishing his sentence.

I brought my menu up to cover my face, and that’s when I heard Dutch.

She laughed. Hard.

“Oh, Bowie. Such a breath of fresh air, you are.” She wheezed.

“I don’t understand my son.” Danyetta glared at Aodhan. “You’re probably responsible for this.”

Aodhan didn’t agree or disagree. Instead, he just gave a shrug, then changed the subject.

Just when we were getting to the good stuff, as in, what was going on with Aodhan and my sister, silence descended over the table, and the entire restaurant.

I knew why when I looked up to find a man walking toward me.

A tall, black man with a pinstripe suit and eyes laser focused directly on me.

He stopped at the table and held out his hand. “Wake Westfield?”

I stood up and took it. “Yeah, you the FBI guy?”

He nodded. “I am. Can we talk and walk?”

CHAPTER 26

I know your lane sucks, but stay in it.

-Dutch to Sheriff Graydon

DUTCH

I knew that he was talking to Wake, but when he got up, I did, too. Following behind them so closely that I was practically on top of Wake.

He caught me around the waist, moved me until I was at his side with his hand in mine, and kept talking as if having me there wasn’t a bother to him in the least.

I could tell that it was to the man that’d come here to talk to him, though.

“Who’s this?” he asked carefully, his eyes taking me in.

“This is my wife, and the reason we know about the incident with Annalise Graydon in the first place,” Wake replied, brooking no room for argument. “What’s your name?”

The man stopped, held his hand out to Wake, then to me, before replying with, “Special Agent Sunny Summers.”

Wake didn’t smile, but I did, which Sunny caught.

“I’ll bet you dealt with a lot of crap when you were younger,” I said quietly. “I had a friend that had the last name of Cloud. First name Blue.”

Sunny blinked. Then shook his head.

“Not quite sure what the hell was up with our parents when they did the naming thing, then,” he answered quietly. “But it makes me feel better that I’m not the only one in existence that has that kind of name.”

“You aren’t,” I said. “My name is Dutch Westfield.”

“Dutch.” He nodded his head, then turned to Wake. “Tell me what’s going on. In detail. Everything, from beginning to end.”

So Wake did, ending with how we found Pedro last night at the school.

“You have him working from home,” he said carefully. “You’re sure that he won’t go and try to burn a school down again? Possibly with Annalise Graydon inside of it?”

Wake shook his head in the negative. “No. I have someone on him that’s keeping an eye on him and the grandmother.”

“Oh,” I said quietly. “Who was that?”

“Etienne,” he answered quietly.

“Okay,” Sunny replied. “As long as you have that handled, then we’ll talk about what happens next.”

“And what is that?” I asked. “Do you need proof? We have a few kids in that school—Wake’s daughter for one—that we need to make sure we protect at all costs. I don’t want her taking out anything on them when they’re innocent in all of this.”

“Do they know anything about what’s going on?” Sunny asked.

“No,” Wake and I answered at the same time, but it was Wake who said, “And I’d like to keep it that way.”

His eyes came to me, and I could see the appreciation of me protecting his kid in his eyes.

I winked at him.

Lolo, though I didn’t know her well, would always be protected.

I’d make sure of it.

“So from here, we’re gonna have to get some intel on the teacher. You said that Sheriff Graydon is antagonistic, too? Do you think that he’s involved in this some way?” he asked.

“As of right now, I think that he’s just trying to get a reelection,” Wake answered. “I don’t think he has anything to do with his sister. When my guys followed him around, they certainly didn’t have anything to say about the two of them spending any time together. In fact, the sheriff stays away from her for the most part. They live in the same city, but they don’t do anything together, from what we’ve been able to tell.”

Sunny nodded his head, then pulled out his phone and sent a text.

“I have a couple of people on this already,” he said. “If I can get your guys to send me what they have, we’ll work with what we have. In the meantime… you stand down. I don’t want you anywhere near this.”

“Trust me,” he said, “I don’t want to be anywhere near this, either. If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll keep my daughter home for the next few weeks as well, that way I don’t have to worry about her in the least.”

“I can get that going,” I offered softly. “With Danyetta.”

He squeezed my hand, and I took that as my sign to head out.

I left the two of them alone to speak while heading toward where Danyetta was.

After getting her away from the table, we figured out how to get Lolo, Bowie, and Dayden home for the next few weeks. That way none of our crew was affected by what was going on in the slightest.

Hours later, when I was lying in bed with a book, Wake walked in looking haggard.

“She’s the cleanest person I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Too clean.”

“That means she likely has something to hide,” I said. “Nobody is that clean.”

“True.” He shrugged out of his shirt, revealing his beautiful chest. “I just wish there was something there that was a blatant ‘she’s a child predator’ for us to follow. Now, it’s going to be pretty hard to deal with because there’s really nothing for them to go on.”

“Could one of the kids wear a monitor or something?” I asked. “A hidden camera that they can get something that way?”

He shook his head. “We want them to stay out of it as much as they can, remember? Them wearing a monitor would be the exact opposite of what we want.”

She sighed. “That’s just no fun.”

“That’s just how it is, baby,” he said. “We’ll have to get in there another way.”

Then his hands started to roam, not in a sexual way, but in a comforting way. He ran his hands from hip to neck, dragging his fingers slowly along my spine until my eyes were heavy and my words were slurred.

“You’re putting me to sleep on purpose,” I grumbled as my fingers clenched in his shirt.

“Maybe,” he admitted.

“Maybe,” I mocked softly. “But it’s working.”

He laughed, and the rumble of his chest was the last thing that I remembered.

The next morning, the first thing we did was walk over to Danyetta’s.

Bowie was hyped.

Lolo was not.

Her sophomore year was important to her, and the next two weeks were jam-packed with lots of things for her to do. Such as a debate at the next high school over.

“What about if I just go to that?” she asked pleadingly.

That’s when I saw Wake buckle down. He went from sweet and coaxing to hard and unforgiving in a heartbeat.

“Lolo,” he said quietly. “If this goes as I think it’ll go, then we’re going to have the Graydons pissed at us. I can’t protect you at school. But I can control the situation here. I don’t want to be this way but, it is what it is, darlin’.”

Lolo sighed, proving she was a good kid.

“Can Dayden and I work together? I know that his grandmother won’t care,” Lolo finagled.

Wake narrowed his eyes, then shrugged. “Sure.”

With Lolo now happy, despite the issues that she had with this setup, Lolo and Bowie left to go back to bed since they wouldn’t be going to school.

Meanwhile, I headed back home.

When Wake went to follow, I shooed him off.

“No. I have to work anyway. I can’t stay any longer. But you don’t have to leave. Stay. Catch up. Allow your sister to feed you, because just sayin’, you messed up when you married me. I don’t cook. And I don’t eat breakfast.”

“What I just said about Lolo stands true for you.” He pointed at his sister. “I’m gonna walk her home and I’ll be back. Three pancakes and eggs. Over easy.”

Then he was grabbing hold of my elbow and guiding me outside.

Without Tex, the walk home went a hell of a lot faster than it went for us on the way there.

When we got to the door, he eyed my RV.

“You’re gonna pull that where you need to go?” he asked skeptically.

I grinned at him. “To the beach. If it makes you feel better… I’ll allow you to turn it around for me at lunchtime.”

Chuckling, he dropped a quick kiss onto my mouth, said goodbye, and left me there to get his breakfast.

I got ready for work and was just about to head out to my truck when there was a knock at the door.

Thinking that it was one of Wake’s men, I opened the door without thinking.

I came face to face with the sheriff.

“How can I help you?” I asked, keeping the door close to me and using my body to shield the majority of the entryway from him.

Sheriff Graydon looked at me with shifty eyes. “The FBI is in town.”

I blinked. “Are they?”

“Yes,” he said. “You or your husband have any knowledge of why that would be?”

Even if I did, it wasn’t like I was going to tell him.

He had to know that.

“Um, no?” I said carefully. “Why? Does this have to do with Wake?”

The way I asked it made it sound like I was genuinely curious.

Graydon’s head tilted as he said, “I find out that Wake is trying to get me fired, I’ll have both of your asses. Your license to work in the state of Florida will be gone. I know a lot of fuckin’ people in this state. People you could only hope to know. It’ll be gone before you can say ‘lickety-split.’”

I crossed my arms over my chest as I said, “Maybe if you did something to keep your job, then you wouldn’t fuckin’ need to be worrying about why the FBI was in town. If you’re nervous, maybe you have a reason to be nervous.”

Graydon narrowed his eyes on me. “Wake home?”

That’s when I knew that I made a mistake.

I shouldn’t have antagonized him.

I should’ve gone with my ‘no’ from earlier and left it that way.

Instead, I’d let my anger at the situation get the best of me.

“Wake’s walking Tex,” I decided to go with.

It was better than ‘yes, he’s here’ and then him not coming when he knew the asshole sheriff was here.

Sheriff Graydon’s eyes went a bit alight at that news, then I saw the moment that he decided to do something he shouldn’t.

He went from a few feet away to nearly at the door. His hand came out, and he was just about to close his fingers around the wood of the door when there was one word spoken behind him, startling us both.

“Darlin’.”

That deep, baritone voice had me glancing away from the man in front of me, to the man behind him.

And if there could be polar opposites in man form, the two standing in front of me would be great examples.

Sheriff Graydon was shorter, more compact, older, and ultimately not very attractive with his graying silver hair.

But the other man was lithe, muscled, and looked like an avenging angel sent from the heavens to rain death upon all who opposed his rule.

He had short, clipped hair that grayed a beautiful silver at the temples, with a deep, rich black covering the rest of his head. And his eyes were a sharp, intense gray that looked almost eerie in the morning sun. He had rich, light tanned skin that denoted Asian descent of some kind, and his tattooed hands—the only tattoos I could see on his entire body—were clasped around a travel mug of what I assumed was coffee.

But his eyes…

They matched the sky…

“Who are you?” Graydon whirled around and swore, showing his apparent startlement more than me.

“The better question is, why are you asking if her man is home when you clearly saw him walking away earlier?” the newcomer asked carefully. “We both did. Though, obviously, you have selective sight.”

Oh, wow.

I was glad that I hadn’t lied.

Though Tex hadn’t been with him, he obviously hadn’t been here.

And with the way that the sheriff was acting right now…

“Who are you?” Sheriff Graydon repeated.

“Name’s Kobe. What’s yours?” he asked just as rudely.

The sheriff narrowed his eyes at the man. Kobe.

That was a cool name.

“You know damn well who I am.” Sheriff Graydon slammed his hand down on his chest where his badge and his nametag lay. “Now, please be kind and leave.”

“I’m here to escort her to work.” He gestured at me. “But it’s nice seeing you, too.”

Graydon ground his molars together, and I had a feeling that he didn’t like being outmaneuvered.

“When will Wake be back?” Sheriff Graydon asked.

I snatched my keys out of my purse and fisted them before saying, “Would you mind stepping back so I can close the door?”

Without looking rude and confrontational, he couldn’t very well deny me the request.

He did so, causing me to inwardly smirk.

I didn’t know who this Kobe character was—though I knew one thing for sure, he definitely wasn’t anyone Wake had sent here—but I’d take him for however long it would take to get the sheriff off my lawn.

I stepped out, locked it, then shoved the keys into my pocket instead of my black hole of a purse.

As I shouldered my bag, I said, “I’m sorry to leave so quickly, gentlemen, but it’s time for me to go to work. Kids to help. Lives to save.”

Sheriff Graydon opened his mouth to say something more, but Kobe was suddenly at my side, placing his big body in between me and the intruder.

“Have a good day, Sheriff,” I cooed, feeling the sickly sweet sound of my voice was just a bit over the top.

Kobe stayed at my side until I was inside the truck.

“Safe travels,” he said to me, his eyes still on the sheriff who was standing stiffly on my front porch still.

I looked at Kobe to find his intense gray eyes on me.

“Don’t allow yourself to be alone with that man ever again,” he said carefully, then closed the door before I could say a word.

I started my truck up, pulled out, and promptly ran over the curb as I pulled out of the driveway, momentarily forgetting that I had an RV attached to my bumper.

Whoops.

When I looked back, Kobe was nowhere to be found.

Sheriff Graydon was standing by his cruiser, looking around, appearing confused.

CHAPTER 27

Some days you’re the shoe. Some days you’re the dog shit.

-Wake to Aodhan

WAKE

Kobe Sano. In the flesh.

A wave of fear rolled through me for a few seconds as I watched him on my video monitor.

At first, he stood in the shadows, watching as the sheriff questioned Dutch at the front door.

When the sheriff shifted his body, his hand going to the front door as if to prevent it from closing, Kobe stepped out of the shadows that he’d been using to conceal himself.

I hadn’t, at the time, realized that he was there.

Hell, I’d practically walked right past him.

In prison, I’d never really known where I stood when it came to Kobe Sano.

Luckily, though, today he’d been on my side.

I rewound the footage again and watched it from the point where I thought that maybe Kobe had arrived.

An hour ago, I’d gotten a call from Dutch on her way to work, who’d told me about the entire incident with Sheriff Graydon and Kobe.

When I’d gotten home, Kobe was gone, as was the sheriff.

I had a feeling I wouldn’t be seeing Kobe until he wanted to be seen.

In the meantime, I called all my contacts to get a check-up on everything that was going on with Graydon’s sister.

After a whole bunch of nothing to give me from each of my guys, I called the FBI agent, Sunny.

“I got a whole bunch of nothing, too,” Sunny added, sounding aggrieved. “But I’m not going to give up. Nobody is this squeaky clean.”

I agreed.

Nobody was.

Everyone looked at stuff they weren’t supposed to on their computer. Yet, there wasn’t even a search history to be found on Annalise Graydon’s school computer, home computer, phone, or anything else she frequented.

Why would you need to delete your browsing history so often?

Hell, I hadn’t done it in a fuckin’ year or more.

Pissed off and needing a release of some kind—and having no Dutch here to throttle it the best way I knew how—I laced up my tennis shoes and made my way out the door, sans Tex, since I planned on making it a long run.

Since my wife was at the beach, and I knew she would have a break coming up soon, I’d decided to run there.

I’d cool myself off in her trailer and bum a ride from someone on the way back.

Or, maybe I’d stay there and wait her out, drive her home, and skip the phone call that would commence when she arrived to ask me to turn the beast around.

My jog took me an hour and fifteen minutes to complete.

By the time I arrived at the RV, her last patient was making his way down the steps, looking excited to be at the beach for his appointment.

Before his mother could catch him, he was racing toward the beach with a cry of glee.

I grinned as I watched, wishing I could go back in time to those years with Lolo.

Maybe one day I’d get to experience those again with a different child…

“Do you want kids, Wake?”

Dutch’s words had me turning to her.

“You read minds now?” I teased.

She shot me a smile, then looked back toward the beach.

“That little boy lost his father a few weeks ago,” she said quietly. “He’s confused. Lashing out. But today I think was the turning point for him. He finally realized that he doesn’t have to act out to show that he’s sad. His dad was a real macho man…” She looked at me. “Like you.” She winked. “His dad told him never to cry while he was gone. He was in the military.”

I felt my stomach sink.

“I hope I didn’t fuck Lolo up by leaving the way that I did,” I admitted carefully.

“You didn’t,” she said as she laughed.

The little boy had made it to the water, and the mom sat down and watched him swim.

“You also avoided my question very skillfully.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and said, “If you were pregnant right now, I’d be ecstatic.”

She smiled softly then.

“I’m not,” she replied. “I started my period today. About halfway through my first client, actually.”

“Bummer.” I held out my hand. “Better luck next time.”

She took my hand, taking a seat on the lowest RV step before saying, “You want that? Kids with me?”

I answered her seriously. “As many as you can give me. More if you’ll allow it. I have a lot of money, and quite a bit of free time. I’ll allow you to be the moneymaker with your life changing work, and I’ll stay at home with all the kids. Teach them how to fight and run wild.”

She giggled. “You may not have raised Lolo full time, but she’s a great kid. I’d be a fool to say no to that.”

I looked toward the Gulf where the mom was now in the water with the child.

“I just don’t want to fuck them up like I did with Lolo,” I admitted.

“You didn’t fuck her up,” Dutch said sharply. “You did a great job raising her. In fact, I would fight anyone that said differently.”

I smiled. “Contrary to what you think, I didn’t really have a hand in the later years. She came and saw me for two hours every few weeks for half of her life.” I hesitated. “But it was worth it. To know that she was here, safe, while I was there, suffering? I’d do it all over again. And twice on Sunday. As long as it meant that she could breathe easy.”

“And that’s why you’re an amazing father,” she replied. “You think that a normal person would do that? No. They would sit there and allow the police to take care of it. And if they didn’t, well then that would just be how it was.”

I snorted. “Any man worth his salt would protect his babies.”

She leaned against my legs, then immediately made a grossed-out sound. “Ewwww,” she squealed. “You’re all sweaty and sandy.”

I laughed and gestured toward the ocean. “Salt. Breeze. Sand.”

She stood up and gestured toward the pier down the road. “You want to walk down there and get some lunch? I found a really quaint little taco place down there when I had to use their parking lot to turn around in eight thousand times earlier. So many times, actually, that the owner offered to turn it around for me.”

“Did you take him up on the offer?” I asked her, laughter tinging my voice.

“Obviously.” She rolled her eyes. “Since it’s here now, and not still in their parking lot.”

I laughed as we walked down the road toward this ‘quaint’ little place.

It turned out to be a great little hole-in-the-wall walk-up taco bar.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t a man that was the owner, either. It was this short, tiny little brunette with her mass of dark brown, curly hair piled so high on her head that it had to be hurting her scalp.

She smiled at my wife the moment she saw her. “RV girl. Are you back for more?”

She gestured down the beach. “I made it down the beach. Thankfully. Thank you for turning it around for me. I swear I’ll never get the hang of it.”

“Well”—she turned her attention to me—“that’s what I said. Then I met my husband. He taught me how to do it all. Drive a stick shift. Back a trailer. Hook up the tractor to the brush cutter.” She looked sad for a few seconds then said, “Then he passed away, and I’ve been alone. And I realized that he was teaching me how to live by myself long before I knew that he was going to leave me.”

That sounded like a long story.

One that I was sure if Dutch stayed where she was for much longer office-wise, she would have the entire story out of the woman that looked way too young to have already lost a husband.

“Now, what can I get you? Today’s special is barbacoa tacos with a chili-lime sauce.” She gestured toward the grill that was sizzling as we spoke. “There’s also queso in the crock pot for now. But if you don’t hurry, that’ll sell out before you make your decision.” She gestured toward her phone. “This online ordering app was the best and the worst thing to ever happen to me.”

We ordered some of everything that there was on the menu, which, admittedly, wasn’t a lot.

In the end, we got eight tacos, guacamole, queso, and fresh tortilla chips that we watched her cook.

When we sat down with our meal, Dutch inhaled four of the tacos before I’d gone through two.

“Wow,” I said. “Did you not eat this morning?”

She licked the sour cream off of her lip before saying, “I didn’t. You know I didn’t. But when I’m on my period, I become a human garbage disposal. I literally eat everything and anything there is to eat. It’s nuts.”

After making a mental note to find her some food on my way home, maybe that place that served the warm cookies that I’d passed on the way here, I finished the rest of the tacos that she didn’t like, or didn’t want, and then a quarter of the queso and guacamole.

I was so happy with everything that I allowed myself to forget about the shit that was swirling around me. At least until there was a phone call from my child’s school.

I groaned as I said, “Hello?”

“Mr. Westfield, this is the principal at Accident West High. Do you have a few moments to talk?” the principal of the school asked carefully.

Since there was no one else around just yet, I put the phone on speaker and allowed Dutch to listen in.

“What can I help you with?” I asked carefully.

“This is about Lauren’s school attendance. We noticed that she wasn’t in class today,” she said.

I looked at Dutch. “I thought my wife explained everything? That she was taking a few weeks off from school.”

“Well, yes,” the principal agreed hurriedly. “But we’ve had four students, two of which are related to you, call in and request this in the last week. And we are investigating why. Did something happen that would require her to be at home for two weeks? Did something happen at the school that I need to address? This is highly unusual, and we would like to make sure that we keep on top of things for other students.”

Dutch looked at me with her brows raised as if to say, ‘how much do you want to say’ but chose to stay silent and allow me to put my foot into it.

“We’ve had a disagreement with the sheriff, and it was brought to our attention that the sheriff’s sister, Annalise Graydon, also works at your school. We would like to make sure that whatever beef the sheriff has with me, that extends to my family, doesn’t happen at school as well. As to why any other students decided to withdraw, I don’t know. But I do know that’s why Bowie and Lolo will be staying at home until we can figure out what’s going on with the sheriff,” I explained.

Not quite the truth, but not quite an untruth, either.

“I see,” she said carefully. “Has anything specific happened at the school that we need to be aware of?”

My brows rose at that. “No.”

She sighed. “A lot of the students find Mrs. Graydon very strict. It’s been something that we’ve been discussing as a department for some time now.”

Good. At least they wouldn’t be totally bombarded with surprise when shit went down.

“Strictness isn’t a bad thing. Is it?” I asked curiously.

I knew that she didn’t want to go into detail. But I could practically hear the way her brain was warring with her common sense.

“Well.” She hesitated. “Students feel she’s not very forgiving. That she’s tough, expects perfection, and is always harping on ‘rules’ and not taking into consideration the kids’ different personalities, or their learning styles.” she said. “This isn’t anything you wouldn’t learn at a school board meeting if you were to attend,” she hastily added.

My lips quirked. “I’ll be sure to come to those from now on.”

“That would be great,” she said. “You’re quite the local hero, Mr. Westfield. And don’t think that we didn’t notice that hefty donation you made to the kids’ playground equipment last Christmas.”

Dutch kicked me under the table, causing me to roll my eyes.

So I was a softy when it came to kids.

Sue me.

“If you ever feel like you need to talk about anything, let me know,” the principal continued. “And I do mean anything.”

With that, she hung up and left us sitting there in silence, looking at the congealing cheese.

“This is impressive,” she said as she tried to dunk a small, broken chip into it. The cheese didn’t budge. “What do you think?”

“I think that we’re getting closer,” I admitted. “How close, I don’t know. But between my guys, Sunny, and that teacher… I think we have the good people on our side.”

The real question was, when would the dam break? When could we get that woman out of the school and away from the children?

What would it take?

CHAPTER 28

Don’t stop. Be leaving.

-Unwelcome mat

DUTCH

The breaking point came when Lolo needed to go to school for a test or she’d fail her class.

“I’ll take you,” I offered.

Lolo looked up, excited to have someone on her side.

“Really?”

“Really,” I said. “I don’t have any patients until two. I had two cancel on me this morning. Meaning I’m free to drop you off, wait, and take you with me so Dayd can grab you from the beach.” I hesitated and looked at Wake. “But, you know, this would all be solved if you’d allow her to have my car.”

The car that I’d been pointing at every time he brought up the issue.

“Your car is a piece of junk,” he repeated himself for the umpteenth time. “And I’m gonna get her one. It’s not my fault that the stupid market is so hot right now. I had the freakin’ car on order for months.”

That was true.

But, in the meantime, he could let her use my old one.

It wasn’t like it didn’t just sit in the driveway now, unused, anyway.

So it was a teeny, tiny little car.

It would be okay.

It got me around.

“Dad’s scared because when he was younger, he had a girl in his high school that had almost your exact replica of car. She was driving down a back road that was about sixty miles an hour,” Lolo explained. “A Ford—one of those big ones with the big, rounded fender wells—swerved into the girl’s lane to avoid a tree falling and they hit head-on going sixty-plus miles an hour. Dad said that girl’s car folded up like an accordion. They were finding pieces of her in the back seat. Meanwhile, the guy in the Ford walked away as if he hadn’t been in an accident.”

I blinked. “Wow.”

“It wasn’t a good scene,” Wake admitted. “I just don’t like the idea of a small car, even if they are cheap and affordable and easy to get insured. My kid’s not riding in one.” He looked at me more seriously. “And honestly, I don’t think you should be either. But, again, I’m not your father, so I can’t really control what you do and don’t do.”

I looked at him with an almost comical expression on my face. “Wasn’t it you who, just this morning, told me not to walk to the taco place down the road again because it was too far, and there were too many alleyways for me to be drug into?”

“I don’t really feel like that is too much to ask.” He crossed his arms. “I’m protective of the things that are mine. So what?”

I patted his arm as I went to walk by him, and he caught my waist and turned me until I was front to front with him.

“You’ll take her,” he said. “But y’all won’t do anything crazy. And when you’re done, you’ll call me immediately. Keep me updated while you’re in there, too.”

I looked up into his beautiful brown eyes, straining my neck to do so, and said, “Thank you for the cookies. Thank you for caring about your girl so much. And thank you for worrying about me being pulled into alleyways.”

His hands squeezed my hips a little harshly, then he dropped a kiss down onto my cheek. “I’ll be here when you’re done tonight. It’s only for today. I have to go meet with a few investors. Then I’ll be home.”

He was making money the rich way—by meeting with people that wanted him to invest in stuff—and not the normal, everyday American way—by going to work and working their butts off.

“Must be nice,” I teased.

He squeezed my hips and his chin tilted up as an excited look entered his eyes. “You can quit any time you want, darlin’. You want to be barefoot and pregnant in my kitchen? I’m an old-fashioned alpha male of a man. That’s exactly where I want you.”

I burst out laughing.

That was the only thing I could do.

“You’re depraved if you think that I’m gonna quit.” I shook my head. “I might enjoy an extended vacation every now and then, but I certainly won’t spend my days in the kitchen waiting for you to get home.”

“I’m home a lot,” he teased. “You wouldn’t be waiting for me to get home.”

I patted his chest. “Then you can stay with the kids. I’ll work.”

He squeezed my hips again and let me go as his watch beeped with the ‘it’s time to go now or you’ll be late’ beep. Over the time that I’d known him, I realized that Wake ran on his own time frame. He did what he wanted to do, was late when he wanted to be late, and showed up when he happened to show up.

Today, however, he was going to be on time. Which was how I knew how important this meeting actually was—him being on time was very rare.

“Time to go, Dad.” Lolo looked at him. “When will y’all give me a brother or a sister?”

Wake looked at me, looked at his watch, then looked at his daughter before saying, “I can’t answer that. I have to go.”

Then he was gone, leaving out the front door and heading toward his bike without answering his child.

Dammit, Wake!

As if he heard me, he turned back and grinned at the house. Likely, he knew that I was glaring holes in him.

He waved, got on his bike, and gunned it out of the neighborhood.

Tex plopped down like he was excited for a few hours’ rest, and I smiled.

“So…” Lolo said. “When?”

I looked at Wake’s daughter, who had his hair and eyes, and wondered if our own children would have that, too.

Wake’s genes were definitely dominant, that was for sure.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Right now, I’m on birth control. It’s not that I would be opposed to a child. I think I might like to have my practice settled before I did anything more, though.”

She nodded as if she understood. “Can I help you decorate your new office? I’d really like to figure out how to do that kind of thing. I’m deciding right now between interior design in college, or a veterinarian.”

I blinked. “Those two things are completely different,” I said as I gathered my keys. “What makes you want to do either one? If I had to guess, I would choose you to be a vet. But only because I feel like it has a more stable job market.” I hesitated. “Though, the suicide rate for veterinarians is very high.”

She looked at me with wide eyes. “It is? Why?”

I gestured toward the door. “Come on. I’ll tell you on the way. We’re gonna be late if we don’t go now.”

She grabbed her backpack as I caught up my purse, and together we headed out to my truck that Wake had turned around and parked so nicely for me to get out.

Though, he did make it to where I wouldn’t take out the mailbox like I nearly did yesterday morning when I left.

We were heading down the street, having narrowly missed the mailbox, when I started to tell her about a patient I had my first year in practice.

“So, though I can’t really tell you his name because of patient confidentiality,” I said as I came to a stop at the stop sign at the end of our subdivision. Once looking both ways, I pulled out and only ran over one curb. “Let’s call him Jason. Jason was a vet for six years. The problem was, and this is true for all vets, dogs and cats aren’t looked at like the responsibilities that they are. People bring their dogs and cats, sometimes horses and other animals, to the vet and expect miracles. The only problem is, vets are human. They can’t fix everything. He saw a lot of death in his six years.”

“That sounds horrible,” Lolo said, sounding like she was already rethinking her choice of profession. “What happened?”

“What happened to make him be suicidal?” I asked curiously. “Well, the start was how people treated their animals. He didn’t like how they didn’t take care of them. He had a lot of dumped puppies and kitties at his door. Then there were the ones he couldn’t save, that he thought he could save. Or the putting down of animals that are old and in need of that kind of thing. People that just dropped them off at the door and didn’t turn around and look back. I don’t know. There were a lot of things that were a catalyst for him. Needless to say, this might be something that you’ll have to love, and I mean, at the bottom of your heart, you are so passionate about this choice that it’s all you want to do. For you to actually succeed at this profession it has to be that way.”

“Hmm,” she said. “I love animals. But I don’t think I love them more than my life.”

I grinned as I slowed to take the turn into the school.

“You could park right there,” she said as she pointed to the drop-off area. “That won’t be used until this afternoon at two when they start picking up kids again.”

I did as she said and narrowly missed the school’s mailbox.

“Whew,” I said. “I’m gonna be so happy when I don’t have to drive this thing around anymore.”

Lolo was giggling as she got out.

I followed shortly behind and we walked into the school, my mind already on other things that had nothing to do with good thoughts.

“This way,” she said. “I have to check in at the office first.”

I followed behind her toward the office and was three steps behind her the entire way.

Once she got the check-in note from the front office lady, she headed toward the computer lab with me not far behind.

“This is where I leave you.” She pointed at a couch in the corner of the room. “That good?”

“Perfect,” I said as I took a seat. “I’ll just read until you’re done.”

She walked into an office with two other teachers, both of which looked ecstatic to see her, and she was directed to a computer in the corner of the room.

I took my seat in the dark alcove in the corner of the hallway, tucked my legs up beside myself, and played a word game on my phone.

I was so engrossed in it, in fact, that at first I didn’t register the talking until there was a very hushed and harsh ‘be quiet.’

I looked up to find a teacher across the room.

“What?” another asked, sounding miffed.

“I said, did you hear about Annalise?” the whispering teacher asked.

“No, what?”

“She’s retiring. The sheriff came in yesterday and told her to gather her shit. She was quitting,” the whisperer whispered. Though, not very well. “It was the weirdest thing. Then the principal came into my room after school yesterday and said that I would be taking over all of Annalise’s classes until further notice.”

Holy shit.

That was news.

Did Sheriff Graydon know what was going on? Did he know that we were concerned? Did he know that his sister was fucked up?

Hell, maybe it ran in the damn family for all I knew.

Maybe that was what was wrong with the sheriff. He didn’t like Wake because he was a threat. A threat to the depraved things that he did.

Or maybe, it was just the depraved things that his sister did.

I felt better knowing that we had a lot of people on this investigation.

Absently, I leaned over and put my elbows onto my knees, then looked at Lolo as she worked away in the computer lab.

I couldn’t wait for this to all be over, and to go back to having a normal life again.

Though, I wasn’t sure how normal it would ever be again, now that I had Wake in my life.

Yeah… maybe I didn’t want it to be normal, now that I thought about it.

CHAPTER 29

Balls.

-Text from Dutch to Wake

DUTCH

“Let me know if you need anything,” I said to Lolo. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

Lolo rolled her eyes, and Dayden laughed as he waved.

Together, they pulled out of the school parking lot, and I headed to the beach.

Hopefully, I could find an extra amount of spots to pull into, otherwise it would be street parking for me.

Fifteen minutes later, I was awkwardly squeezed in between a minivan that’d taken up two spots, and a very large, very yummy smelling food truck.

That food truck might save me today since I’d gone and done the dumbest thing ever by promising I wouldn’t make the short hike to the taco shop down the street.

Though, I could see where Wake was coming from with his desire to keep me safe.

There were quite a few alleyways between here and there. Not to mention, I had to take one to get to the boardwalk entrance…

“Nice parking job,” a man muttered darkly.

I looked up to find an older man watching me.

I frowned. “Sorry, it’s new.”

“It’s obvious,” he countered. “Maybe if you don’t know how to drive it, you shouldn’t buy it.”

I tilted my head and eyed him curiously. “I didn’t buy it.”

His brows shot up. “Sugar daddy buy it for you?”

Instead of crossing my arms over my chest and giving him the side-eye that I wanted to, I went about starting the generator up and walking into the trailer to push the pop-ups out.

Once that was accomplished, I fixed everything that knocked over during the trip—and my inability to miss a curb if my life depended on it—and walked back outside.

Since I didn’t have anything until two, and that was a few hours from now, I decided to go for a walk on the beach.

I was doing just that when I got a phone call from Lolo.

“Hello?” I answered, surprised that she was calling me.

Not that I minded. I liked that she was calling me. She’d just never done it before.

“Oh my god! You have to get here fast!”

I blinked at the whispered tones that’d just come through my phone.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Where are you?”

My phone dinged, and I pulled it away from my ear to look at it.

It was Lolo’s location.

I clicked on the map and blinked. “You’re at the beach?”

“Literally right down the road from where you said you were parking. At the other public entrance.” She paused. “We watched you park your truck. It was hilarious. But… just get down here.”

That ‘get down here’ would mean that I would have to pass a few alleys on the way.

Shit.

Surely Wake would forgive me that I had to go find out what was wrong with his daughter…

Hustling back up the beach toward the beach entrance—there was a large jetty in between the two entrances that would take me much longer to navigate than just going back—I made it to where her location said she was within ten minutes.

I’d just stepped past an alley when a large hand grabbed my wrist.

I whipped around, ready to defend myself, and came face to face with Dayden.

“Dayd,” I whispered. “What the hell?”

He grimaced, realizing too late that he’d scared the shit out of me.

“Sorry,” he mouthed.

I waved my hand in the air. Then looked around for Lolo, who was nowhere in sight.

“She’s behind the dumpster.” He pointed, saying it so quietly that I almost didn’t catch the words.

I looked in that direction, then tilted my head.

“What is it?” I asked.

He held his finger up to my lips, then gestured for me to follow him.

I did, coming to a stop on the other side when I realized that there was another alleyway that jutted off the back of the one I’d been in.

I crouched down behind the dumpster when I saw the opening, then touched Lolo’s shoulder.

She looked at me with wide eyes, pointed, then mouthed, “Listen.”

Since I wasn’t at her vantage point, I was getting really muffled sounds at first due to the wall.

But she was recording, which I just then realized, so I didn’t ask her to move.

Instead, I wiggled my way between her and the dumpster and then peeked my head around the corner.

What I saw shocked me.

It was Sheriff Graydon.

But it was also his sister.

I hadn’t seen her in real life. Only in photos that Wake had produced to make sure that I didn’t run into her and not know who she was.

But there she was, in the flesh, poking her brother in the chest with one extended finger, practically spitting in his face.

“…already found you someone. I just need more time,” she hissed. “Give me more time!”

Sheriff Graydon leaned forward, shook his head in her face, then pushed her away viciously. So hard that she almost hit the ground of the alley. She caught herself just in time for him to say, “Don’t you think that I’ve tried? I can’t give you any more time. I just straight up can’t. They won’t allow me to.”

“Hey, what are you doing?” a loud voice yelled. “Y’all better not be goin’ through my trash! That’s an invasion of privacy!”

I cursed, realizing that the newcomer was talking about us.

I pulled back, looked Lolo straight in the eye, and said, “Go. Now. I’ll take care of this.”

As in, they better not be anywhere near me, just in case shit hit the fan like I now fully expected it to.

I heard a curse from behind me as Sheriff Graydon realized he wasn’t alone when he thought he was.

Lolo looked at me, but before she could say a word, Dayden was pulling her away and out of the alleyway.

I stood up and moved to the man that was staring at us.

“We weren’t going through your things,” I told him honestly. “We were looking at the people farther down the alleyway.”

The man wearing a stained white apron didn’t believe me.

He moved close and poked me in the chest, his bony finger digging in uncomfortably before he said, “I know who you are. You’re that bitch that’s dating that rich man that owns half the town. Ain’t no way you weren’t doing something bad. I been tellin’ him for months I don’t want to sell. Now you’re in my place, goin’ through my trash.”

What were the freakin’ odds?

“I swear, I wasn’t,” I promised. “Go look. I was lookin’ at the sheriff.”

“The sheriff?” His eyes widened as he hoofed it around the dumpster, then looked around for someone that wasn’t there.

Son of a bitch.

He narrowed his eyes at me.

I saw the moment he decided to think the worst of me.

His eyes narrowed farther, his hands clenched, and then he was charging.

“Oh, fuck.” I winced.

I was not a fighter.

I wasn’t even a little bit of a fighter.

I’d never been in a fight in my life. I didn’t have a gun to protect myself. Hell, I didn’t even know how to work a gun.

I braced, ready for things to go south, and closed my eyes as I watched the man’s fist start swinging at my face.

It never came.

A sharp, quick snap, followed by a scuffle, and then a thump, had me opening my eyes to see Kobe, once again, standing there.

He looked at me as if I was crazy. “What are you doing? Standing still only makes it easier for him to hit you!”

He had a point.

“I don’t know how to fight,” I admitted glumly.

He grunted something about Wake being ‘a complete dumbass for not showing you how to protect yourself’ then kicked some dirt into the guy’s face that he’d just taken down.

The guy on the ground didn’t even flinch when the dirt went up his nostrils.

“A,” I said carefully. “We need to leave. I need to go find Lolo and Dayden. B, the sheriff was just right here. There’s no way I can be near this—” I pointed to the man on the ground. “Or he’ll have the perfect reason to hurt me in some way. C, thank you for helping me.”

Kobe jerked his chin toward the alley where Lolo and Dayden were waiting. “They didn’t go far.”

Motherfucker.

I marched toward them saying, “The next time I tell you to leave, you leave.”

Dayden held his hands up. “I’m not touching her when she doesn’t want to be touched. And she didn’t want to leave you.”

That was commendable of him.

But motherfucker. She needed to leave.

Like, right now.

“Both of you go,” I said. “Now.”

Lolo didn’t waste time this time in listening to me.

She hustled out of the alleyway, headed toward what I hoped was Dayd’s truck, and didn’t say another word.

Meanwhile, I heard the man behind us groan.

“What the fuck kind of building is this that Wake would want to buy it?” I grumbled to myself as I marched out of the alley and into the sunshine.

“Westfield,” Kobe said, causing me to whirl, to see him speaking into his phone. “Know you’re just gettin’ back in town. You might want to get here and pick your girl up. She’s shakin’ like a leaf, and pretty sure the sheriff will now do what he needs to do to make sure she doesn’t talk.”

There was a moment of silence as Wake processed Kobe’s words, and then, “Where are you?”

Kobe gave him specific directions that included ‘due east’ and a longitudinal coordinate of some sort. And then hung up.

I gave it five minutes, max, before he was here.

“That building back there is storefront, beachfront,” Kobe answered my earlier question. “He wants it because it’s a good location, and a specific someone in his life has really liked being at the beach lately.”

Well, shit.

That made my heart hurt.

Had Wake done that for me?

Something inside my throat started to clog up at the idea of Wake pressuring someone to sell—especially when it was a bad someone. He’d done that. For me.

For his new wife that he’d married just to make sure that she had a fallback plan in case someone figured out what she’d done.

For me.

He’d done it all for me.

God, I loved him!

I fucking loved him!

When had that happened?

“Oh,” I said softly, unsure what to say.

“Oh,” Kobe said. “Wake’s on his way.”

I tilted my head. “What?”

“Wake. He’s on his way,” Kobe said.

I blinked. “How do you…”

Then I heard the roar of a motorcycle.

Of multiple motorcycles.

But only one held my attention as it all but skidded to a halt at the mouth of the alley we were still standing in.

If looking like a badass, avenging fallen angel was possible for a human being, Wake Westfield looked like one at that moment in time.

He walked right up to me, tipped my chin back gently with his fingertip, and studied my face, looking for any signs of injury for a few seconds before stepping away.

His eyes went to Kobe, and I saw something pass through their quiet connection then. One of respect.

“Thank you,” he said to Kobe, his voice raspy and raw.

Wounded. As if him getting a call about me being almost hurt had hurt him.

“I’m okay,” I hurried to add.

Wake’s eyes flicked to me.

“What happened?” he asked. “I only got the message ‘you need to get here’ and didn’t stop to look at anything else.”

As in, he’d rushed to get to me, hadn’t stopped to see anything other than the first message that I needed him before he was hurrying toward me. That was so sweet.

And another reason that I loved him.

“So it started like this…” I said as I explained, in detail, everything that had happened. Or tried to. But he interjected a lot, asking question after question as he tried to clarify everything.

“Kobe,” Wake said then. “How long were you there? Did you hear the sheriff and his sister talking?”

Kobe grinned. “Sure did.”

He had? What the hell? I hadn’t seen him there until the end…

“What did they say?” Wake asked. “I want to hear everything.”

“Your girl recorded it,” Kobe said. “Just watch her video.”

Then Kobe left, leaving me with Wake who hadn’t lost an ounce of his anger in the time since he’d rolled up. “My girl? As in my daughter? My daughter was here, too?”

Shit.

We hadn’t gotten that far.

“Yes,” I said carefully. “She was the one to call me to tell me that they were here.”

Wake drew in a deep breath, then blew it out. “Son of a bitch.”

“Can’t hear a goddamn thing.” Wake grumbled. “If we send this to the FBI, maybe they’ll be able to do something with it.”

“It was taken without their consent,” I replied glumly. “Will they be able to use it?”

Wake shrugged. “Law isn’t my thing. The only thing I can do is send it to them in hopes that they can utilize it in some way. I don’t have the computer skills to make it happen.”

“I might know someone,” Dayden said. “We can send it to the FBI, but I can also send it to this computer guy I know at school. He’s always making movies out of old video clips for TikTok for the other kids. He might be able to help.”

“I’m not involving another kid in all of this,” Wake immediately started to disagree.

I looked at my watch, unable to waste any more time. “I have to get to work. The next patient I have coming in is critical. I can’t reschedule him like I did my first one.” I paused. “And for what it’s worth, I agree with Wake. We don’t need to be involving any more children.”

Wake shot me an approving look, but Dayden and Lolo started to look reticent.

“What?” Wake barked, sounding exasperated.

I was sure he was exhausted.

He’d left early this morning to deal with whatever he’d gone to deal with when it came to his money. Then he’d come home to deal with this. We’d been standing next to my trailer for the last hour talking about what we were going to do.

“We already sent it to him,” Lolo said sheepishly. “We looked the video over and knew we weren’t going to get anything out of it.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose.

Just as I was about to start counting to ten, Wake growled in frustration.

“Get it sent to the FBI,” I suggested quietly. “And sadly, I really do have to go. That’s him.”

Wake followed my gaze, his eyes narrowing. “He’s old.”

“He’s still critical,” I said softly.

The old man shuffled toward the RV, his eyes dead inside.

Last week, he’d lost his wife of seventy years.

He was ninety-one years old, and they’d been married since he’d been twenty-one. Together since they were fourteen. They’d had eight children, thirty-two grandchildren, and multiple more great-grandchildren.

He’d outlived all his children. Two of his great-grandchildren. And his wife had contracted dementia ten years ago to the point where she didn’t even recognize her own husband or family. She’d had it bad, too. To the point where she was combative and confused. Forced to stay at a home where she could have around-the-clock care.

But my patient had always been at her side.

But he was now alone, suicidal, and just wanted to join his wife.

Which, I could understand.

It was hard to even contemplate not having Wake around, and we hadn’t even had anywhere near as long together as the old man and his bride did.

“Gotta go.” I leaned forward and pressed a kiss against the corner of Wake’s mouth. “I love you. See you when I get home.”

Then I was all but skipping off toward the old man, smiling wide when his eyes shifted up to meet mine. “You want to stay outside in the sunshine, or go into the RV?”

The old man looked past me toward Wake and Lolo.

Dayden, too.

“Your man?” he guessed.

I looked over my shoulder to see Wake’s eyes intense and focused solely on me.

“Yep,” I confirmed. “My husband.”

“He loves you,” he said. “He really loves you.”

I smiled as I turned back around to face the old man. “He does?”

“Oh, yeah,” my patient confirmed. “A whole, whole lot. That’s the kind of love that breaks you when it’s gone.”

I felt my heart thump. “You had that.”

“And now I’m broken.”

CHAPTER 30

If you want to impress me with your vehicle, it better me a motorcycle. I don’t ride on just anything.

-Text from Dutch to Wake

WAKE

My original intention had been to head home and get some work done.

But after her earlier words, my ass had found a nice sunny spot on the beach, and I’d hung out there for the last two hours.

She loved me.

Those words.

I hadn’t realized how much power three little words could hold, but the moment they’d crossed her lips, I’d been fucking wrecked.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

Those three words kept repeating in my head like the best sounding melody until all I could focus on was having some alone time with my woman to give them back to her.

The last client that she had for the day finally graced the top of her RV steps and quickly exited after closing the door.

I got up, dusted the sand from my ass, and headed toward the RV.

When I got the door opened, it was to find her reaching upward and pressing the button that would close the slides of the RV.

She blinked at me, then smiled. “Are you here to turn my RV around for me?”

I closed the door, then locked it.

“No,” I said. “I’m here to do something else.”

She frowned and stopped what she was doing to turn to me. “Did something happen? Did the FBI get back to you?”

I had no clue.

My phone had been dead for a few hours now, and I hadn’t bothered to charge it.

I knew that Lolo was safe at home with Danyetta and Bowie with Aodhan there to watch over them. The rest of my guys… well, they could wait.

Hunching my shoulders slightly, I slipped the shirt off of my head by tugging at the back of the collar and tossing it to the floor.

Seconds later, I was working on my jeans at the same time I said, “Take off your clothes.”

Her eyes went wide. “I’m still on my period.”

I grinned. “I don’t really care.”

She was biting her lip as she slowly took her fancy clothes off, laying them gingerly on the counter of the kitchen island before going to work on her pantyhose.

I palmed my cock, stroked it, and waited for her to get completely naked before I moved toward her with deliberate steps.

She blinked at me, her hands going up to allow me full and complete access to her body. And when I came into contact, skin to skin, she wound her arms around my neck and went up onto her tippy toes before smiling timidly at me.

“Today won’t ever happen again,” I said as I lifted her and took her to the bedroom.

“I can’t believe you just went up three stairs as if I don’t weigh three-quarters of what you weigh,” she mumbled into my throat.

I tossed her down on the bed that I was sure had never been used before, then said, “You need the bathroom before we start?”

Her eyes were huge as she bolted for the bathroom, coming out long seconds later with a towel that I’d seen hanging on the wall to dry her hands with.

She laid it down on the bed before staring at me as if silently asking, “What next?”

I crooked my fingers toward her, and she crawled up the length of me, coming to a stop, straddling my thighs, my cock sandwiched between us.

She leaned over, allowing her breasts to swing free over my chest, and I reached up and pulled the tie from her hair, watching raptly as her braid instantly unraveled.

All that gorgeous red hair came loose from the braid in gentle waves, tickling my chest and neck with the ends.

“This hair,” I said. “I love it.”

Her eyes widened.

“You want to know something else?” I asked her, feeling something powerful take up residence in my chest.

“W-what?” she asked.

“I don’t fuckin’ like it when you say it and leave, and I can’t do anything about this feeling in my chest.” I used my free hand to press against my chest where it’d been aching since her words.

She bit her lip and looked at me uncertainly.

“I wanted to tell you that I love you, too,” I said. “I’ve never believed in love at first sight. At least, not until I met you that first time you marched into my prison and asked me how to get away with killing a man.”

She swallowed hard, and unshed tears started to well in her eyes.

When one dropped over, I caught it with the pad of my thumb, then brought it to my mouth.

Her smile wobbled, and another slipped free.

“You did?” she finally asked.

“I did,” I confirmed. “I thought that I loved my ex-wife. But what I felt for her, and what I feel for you, are two different things.” I paused. “Something like this… I don’t think it’s healthy. I can’t promise that I won’t make this bad. Make this to where I’m practically smothering you with my intensity. But I’ll try not to run you over with my emotions.”

She smiled, moving down until her breasts were smashed up against my chest, and her mouth was only a few inches from mine.

“I can handle anything you try to throw at me, Wake Westfield,” she challenged me.

I grinned, then flipped us so fast that she emitted a startled squeak.

“Anything?” I asked, lining my cock up with her entrance by feel alone.

Her eyes were wide with wonder when she said, “Anything.”

I slid inside of her, groaning at the tight heat that she surrounded me with.

Her leg went up to allow me to go deeper, and I used that to my advantage and practically shoved it to her chest, pinning it between us.

Our eyes stayed locked together as I slowly took her in measured thrusts, trying to get her to where she needed before I started to take my own.

But the way she was looking at me, and the way she was practically squeezing me to death, had me seeing stars before I was ready.

“Touch yourself.” I leaned back. “Make yourself come.”

I went back onto my knees, lifting her hips with my hands, and practically offering her up as a sacrifice as I slowed my pace even more.

She went to work on herself, and it was the sexiest thing in the world. Her hands between her thighs, circling her clit. Her head thrown back as she searched for something that was just out of reach. Her heels were dug into the bed, adding support to her hips to put herself in the perfect position for my thrusts. Tits were shaking and quivering with each thrust of my hips into hers.

But the best part of it all? Knowing that all of that was mine.

Just the idea… the thought of knowing that she was mine and no one else’s… that was all it took for me to lose sight of what I was doing.

The come bubbled in my balls and started to send a shooting spark down my spine.

One second, I was holding on by the skin of my teeth, and the next I was coming, shooting everything I had to give inside of her beautiful pussy. Filling her up so full that it started spilling out the sides.

I groaned and threw my head back, my hands digging deep into her knees.

She cried out, her body going rock solid, as her legs practically gripped me and didn’t let go.

She, thankfully, followed right behind me.

“Ahhh!” she cried out. “Yes!”

She collapsed onto the bed, wrung out and panting, staring at the ceiling as if it held some cosmic answer to what ailed her.

I grinned down at her, bending forward so that I was hovering just over the top of her.

A bead of sweat ran down my forehead, down my chin, and farther onto my neck before dropping right between her breasts.

Another one shortly followed.

She opened her eyes then, baby blue gaze staring right at me, and said, “I can’t decide if that’s hot as fuck, or gross.”

I grinned. “Trade you my bodily fluids for yours.”

She gagged, laughed, then patted my thigh. “Normally, I would lie here and bask in the pleasantness, but we have to get home to cook. I told Danyetta I would cover dinner with everyone because she has some stuff to deal with at the restaurant.”

“And let me guess, Aodhan is going with her?” I reached for the towel, handed it to her, then helped her disengage from me before watching her waddle to the bathroom.

I got up, cleaned myself up with another towel I found in the closet, shrugged my clothes back on, and then found hers.

She was just returning from her clean-up when I handed her her clothes.

I was pulling away when she caught one of my fingers, holding it tight.

I looked at her with a raised brow, and she said, “Don’t break my heart, Wake Westfield. I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

I laughed right there in her face. “Don’t worry, Dutch Westfield. I’m too old to be breaking hearts anymore. I just want to love you. Not break you.” I paused. “Unless it’s in the bedroom. Because there I might not be as gentle with you as you want.”

She winked at me, then reached for her shirt before placing the rest on the counter.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m getting used to that part of you.”

We walked out of the trailer ten minutes later, and I helped her get her truck ready to roll.

Once it was turned around and facing the right direction, a familiar motorcycle pulled out of the spot a few rows back from mine and pulled to a stop beside me.

Davis.

I frowned at him as he turned his bike off beside the truck door.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him.

His eyes looked from me to Dutch, to the RV before he grinned. “I was going to tell you I found a few things today on your sheriff. But I always heard ‘if the RV is a rockin’ don’t come a knockin.’”

Dutch gasped.

“You could tell?” she half shrieked.

“Uh, yeah.” Davis grinned, looking uncaring. “You could definitely tell.”

“Shit,” she muttered, color suffusing her cheeks.

“It is what it is,” Davis said. “I’ll follow y’all home.”

I gave him a chin jerk and opened Dutch’s truck door. “I’d drive it for you, but I don’t want to leave my bike here. Supposed to storm like a motherfucker tonight.”

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry. I’m an old pro at this.”

She proved that by getting in and pulling off, only to run over every single median and curb between here and the exit if it was a turn.

Davis and I watched her go, me with a much goofier smile on my face than Davis.

“You got a good one there, Westfield,” Davis said.

I looked at Davis then, really looked at him.

“You okay?” I asked.

Davis had gone through some shit since the office had been blown up by that freak after the girl he was bodyguarding. At first, I thought his mind was fucked up from the explosion, when in reality, he was questioning his abilities.

But he was slowly coming back to himself. And look at him, bringing me information.

He was back. Or as back as he was going to be for a while.

“I’m… better.” He shrugged. “First detail back… my mind wasn’t in the right place. But it is now. As long as shit doesn’t fuck with me like it was.” He sighed. “Being out is weird. I don’t know how to make decisions anymore. But I’ll get there.”

Dutch’s truck accelerated, bringing my attention away from Davis for a few long seconds.

Just the right amount of time to see a Hummer blow the intersection light and plow right into Dutch head-on.

“Oh, fuck.”

My feet were moving before I’d actively registered that I wanted to move.

I’d just crested the parking lot barrier that separated the ‘beach’ from the road when another vehicle ran into the backside of the RV. It was one of those Mercedes Sprinter Vans that were massive and boxy. It was no match for the shitty-built RV. The RV buckled and groaned, coasting right off the axles and into the back of the truck that Dutch was occupying.

The cab disappeared even more, turning into an accordion from both the front and the back.

My heart started to pound, and soon, I was at the driver’s side door, trying to yank it open.

Not even all the strength that I possessed could get it to budge.

Luckily, out of all the things that shouldn’t work on the vehicle, the window did.

It rolled down when she reached over and pressed the button.

“Hey,” she croaked. “I’m okay.”

I looked at her skeptically, fear and adrenaline still raging through my body.

“I swear, I’m okay,” she promised. “I would’ve been out already could I have gotten the door open.”

“Crawl through,” I ordered, feeling a wave of relief swell through me at her words.

“About that.” She hesitated. “My foot is caught between the gas pedal and the floorboard. I’ve tried since it happened to get it out. That jolt from the back”—she jerked her thumb in the direction—“didn’t help. It only wedged it in there more.”

I used my forearms to push myself up into the truck, then leaned over the door and looked down.

Her foot was indeed stuck.

And bleeding.

I gritted my teeth and decided to leave it where it was, allowing someone else to help her out of there by cutting the goddamn gas pedal off.

Luckily, the sound of sirens filled the air.

Also luckily, we usually had a way better response time from the volunteer fire department than we did from the sheriff’s office.

When this was all said and done, I would be making a large monetary donation to the Accident Fire Department for that fast response.

“Oh,” she said when I jolted down onto my feet. “That hurts.”

“Your foot?” I asked, hoping that was it.

“No.” She grimaced and pressed onto her chest. “The airbags deployed and hit me in the chest. I didn’t think it would feel that bad.”

I looked at all the white powder around her, then dusted a bit off her nose. “It did its job, though.”

She smiled.

“Sir,” I heard. “Step aside.”

I looked behind me to see a man dressed in a mechanic’s uniform standing behind me.

Volunteer meant people coming from their jobs, or wherever they happened to be, heading straight here. This man had come from one of the two mechanics shops in town.

I’d be making note of that, too.

“The door is stuck, and her foot is pinned between the gas pedal and the floorboard,” I explained as I stepped back to allow him to look.

He tried the door as if he didn’t trust my words.

I wouldn’t blame him for that. I would’ve checked that, too.

“Gonna need the jaws, Larry!” I heard him call from peering into the vehicle. “This one is good. Just needs cut out.”

“Can’t say the same for this one,” I heard ‘Jerry’ say. “He needs an ambulance.”

“Stay with me,” Dutch pleaded when she saw me turn away and glance at the man who’d been responsible for the accident.

I glanced at her. “I will.”

She smiled. “And don’t kill anyone today.”

Now that, I couldn’t promise.

Especially not after the hell I just went through watching her car get hit head-on…

If she’d been going any faster… if she’d had time to accelerate after she’d turned out of the parking lot, I might not be staring at my wife, whole and alive.

“Back away, sir,” I heard.

I glanced at Dutch to make sure she was okay, then said, “Cover your ears, darlin’. This’ll get loud.”

And it did seconds later when they used the Jaws of Life to get her out.

I stepped farther away from the truck that Dutch was in, only to step closer to the moron on the ground.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. He made me. I’m sorry,” was all I heard from the man that’d been driving the Hummer. “He didn’t give me a choice. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. He made me. I’m sorry.”

I wanted to fuckin’ punch him just to shut him up.

My hand fisted in the urge to do just that, but before I could, Kobe was there, stilling my hand. “Let him talk.”

I turned away, my eyes once again on the woman that was being cut out of the truck behind me.

She’d wanted me to stay, but I’d just been in the way of the firefighters doing their job.

Why did it feel like I’d just broken a promise to her?

“Calm your tits,” I heard Davis say. “You look like you’re about to murder everyone.”

“He is.” Kobe laughed. “First, his wife was nearly attacked in an alley. Now she was hit head-on by an armored Hummer. That’s not a fuckin’ coincidence. Also, I’m fairly sure I saw that Hummer in the impound lot yesterday at the sheriff’s office.”

Rage burned in my belly. Rage so all-encompassing that I knew that today, I might just end up back in jail by the end of it.

CHAPTER 31

No alcohol for me. Just drugs.

-Dutch to a nurse

DUTCH

It took me a few seconds to see the Hummer blowing the light, but when I did, there was nothing I could do.

The weight of the RV was too heavy for me to stop on a dime. And by the time my foot was hitting the brake, I was already feeling the first of the impact of the big vehicle plowing into mine.

I kept replaying those last few moments before the crash in my mind, over and over again.

A smug voice sounded from behind the curtain that was pulled around me for privacy, and then there he was, the sheriff.

I saw more than heard Wake stand up from his seat at my bedside, and tensed, knowing this was about to get ugly, fast.

It took me two seconds to swing my legs over the side, and one second to stand, using the IV pole that I luckily wasn’t using at the corner of the bed. I’d just taken the first step on my bad leg—that luckily wasn’t broken—when the sheriff started to speak.

“Looks like you ran into some trouble, son,” he said, his eyes gleaming. “That’s a shame that it happened. You could’ve been really hurt.”

It wasn’t the words he said, but how he said it.

The tone of his voice, as if he’d done us a favor in not killing me.

And we all knew—the sheriff himself, Wake, me, and all of the men in Wake’s makeshift MC that he refused to call a MC—that the sheriff had something to do with this.

There was just too much of a coincidence after overhearing the sheriff and his sister in the alley, and then I have a car wreck with a Hummer that was confirmed impounded, and stolen from the sheriff’s impound lot.

“Get out,” Wake said through clenched teeth. “Get out right now, and I’ll gladly allow you to walk, because I really don’t want to have to go back to jail. But, you stay, I can’t promise that you won’t get your fuckin’ ass kicked.”

The sheriff smiled. “That’s threatening an officer of the law.”

“I’ll show you a threat if you want to hear a threat,” Wake growled.

Before anything else could be said, a doctor finally came into the room. I’d been sitting alone with Wake for over an hour because the hospital I’d gone to was slam packed with people that’d come down for spring break, and wound up sick or hurt. It was a nuthouse.

“Sheriff,” the doctor said carefully. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave. I need to see my patient.”

“I’m the sheriff. You can speak to her in front of me,” the sheriff tried.

But it was the doctor, and not Wake, who said, “Actually, I can’t. Now leave.”

The sheriff sighed. “Cliff, Cliff, Cliff. How many times do I have to tell you that I’ll find it out one way or another?”

“Well, it won’t be this way,” Dr. Cliff snarled. “Now fucking leave.”

Color me surprised when the sheriff left without another word.

He did have a smug smile on his face, though. One that I knew Wake wanted to punch right off his mouth.

The doctor waited until we saw the sheriff leave not only the makeshift room I was in, but the busy area completely before he said, “I really fuckin’ hate that guy.”

“Fuckin’ same,” Wake growled, his eyes glaring holes through the door that the sheriff just escaped through.

Little did he know that Wake would’ve leveled his ass had he stayed very much longer.

“Your x-rays look good,” he said instead of dawdling for too long. “From what I can tell, it just looks severely bruised. I recommend ice, elevation, ibuprofen, and no weight bearing for at least the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours. After that, you can add weight as you wish. Just give it some grace. No running forty miles on it this Saturday.”

I laughed out loud at that. “Trust me. If I’m running, someone’s chasing me.”

His lips twitched, and he turned to Wake. “She can’t operate any heavy machinery with this medicine that’s in her system right now. That means she needs a ride home. Tomorrow after it wears off, she can operate the heavy machinery.”

Wake snorted. “She doesn’t operate heavy machinery, either.”

“Well then, she should be all set.” He smacked his thigh. “I’ll have a nurse in here to get y’all out of here as soon as possible. Fuckin’ spring breakers are driving me mad.”

With that, he was gone, and Wake was once again looking at me like I’d been murdered and resuscitated this afternoon.

“I’m fine,” I repeated for what had to be the fiftieth time since I’d been pulled out of my truck.

“You could’ve been badly injured.” He sighed. “Somethin’ needs to be done.”

“Something was done.”

We blinked, surprised to hear Sunny’s voice from so close to us.

Wake whirled, caught off guard that Sunny had snuck up on him.

It was coming from the other side of our curtain, the other makeshift room that was directly beside mine.

Wake ripped the curtain to the side, and there was Sunny, lying back on a gurney, his arms behind his head, with a woman standing beside him looking amused.

The woman was familiar.

And it was only when she opened her mouth to say, “Hello,” that I realized who it was.

Annalise Graydon.

I stiffened.

Wake, realizing that there was something amiss, moved closer to me.

“What’s going on?” I barked.

“Oh, boy,” Annalise said. “You better start talking, quick.”

Sunny sat up, swung his legs over the table, and looked at the two of us before saying, “Annalise Graydon has been running a sting operation with Homeland Security. I found out this afternoon that Sheriff Graydon is using his position as sheriff of Accident County to smooth the way for some illegal activities to occur. Such as some pedophile rings, some illegal gambling, and a few other things we’re not at liberty to discuss with you at this time. Needless to say, Annalise has been working with the authorities to get her brother a full life sentence in a prison cell.”

“He was taking my kids,” she said softly. “At first, I wasn’t aware of what was going on. He just asked questions about some of my kids, and I willingly gave up the answers, thinking he was just being a good sheriff. Following up with the community, things like that. Then they started disappearing, and I had to start asking hard questions. And in the end, I found that my brother was involved in their disappearance.”

“And Pedro?” I asked sharply. “What happened there?”

“What happened there was my fault.” Annalise grimaced. “I was trying to see if my brother was getting to him. He’d asked about Pedro, and I’d gotten worried that things were happening surrounding that sweet boy. I got overly pushy when I wanted to make sure that he was safe. And ended up scaring the crap out of him instead. I feel horrible.”

I let out a relieved breath.

If Sunny trusted her, then I would try to trust her, too.

“And when will this investigation on Sheriff Graydon finish up?” I asked, feeling Wake all but frothing to ask the question at my side.

“As of today, the investigation is over. They’ve just issued the arrest warrant. In fact, you might get to catch the show if you head out there now.” Sunny stood up. “I alerted the proper authorities to his whereabouts when I heard him in here as I was coming to deliver the good news.”

“And today?” Wake asked. “Was he a part of that accident?”

“Yes.” Annalise grimaced. “I was there when he ordered it. Took a prisoner out of the lockup and gave him that Hummer himself. Said if he survived, he was free to go sans misdemeanor.”

“That piece of shit,” Wake growled.

“What are yo—eeep!” I cried when suddenly Wake had me up in his arms, and he was carrying me out of the hospital.

The nurse tossed me my paperwork as we passed and said, “Have a nice day!”

I caught the paperwork, and then we were all but marching through the hospital corridor and straight out the front door. Into a whirlwind.

Wake’s whole crew stood there, as well as about fifteen officers, ranging from FBI to local authorities, to other crews that didn’t have their names embroidered on their shirts. But they had that whole ‘I’m a cop’ look about them that told me what they were, despite their nondescript clothes.

But the highlight, the absolute most perfect thing about this all, was seeing Sheriff Graydon in handcuffs.

“So what does this mean for the county?” I asked Sunny. “Who’s the sheriff?”

“The one under him will take over until a special election can be done,” he answered. “Which, I assume, will be very soon seeing as the one under him is dumb as a box of rocks.”

I’d had no experience with anyone besides Graydon, so that would definitely be enlightening.

Looks like Accident might be in for some changes.

“You!” Sheriff Graydon growled. “What are you doing with them?”

I turned to see Annalise shrinking behind Sunny.

But Sheriff Graydon wasn’t having it. He marched forward, forgetting that he was in police custody, and was roughly yanked back by the bald-headed man beside him with a face like a junkyard dog.

“No,” the junkyard dog snapped. “Stay. Or you’ll go into the cruiser.”

Graydon didn’t stay.

And we all got the pleasure of watching him be carried away while a man beside the junkyard dog read him his Miranda Rights.

“…attempted murder of Dutch Westfield, conspiracy to commit murder, sex trafficking minors….” The list continued as the officer continued, telling him what he was being accused of.

Best. Day. Ever.

EPILOGUE

There are two sides to every story. And then there are the screenshots.

-Fact of life

WAKE

Six weeks later

I’d barely gotten any sleep the night before, so waking up outside on my favorite lounger, listening to the water lap against the dock I was currently lounging on wasn’t a surprise.

What was a surprise was to hear my wife talking instead of being at work like she said she was going to be.

Opening my eyes, I twisted in my lounger to find her, Lolo, Danyetta, and almost all of my crew on the picnic benches behind me. The smell of meat on the grill must’ve been what woke me, because I’d become quite accustomed to sleeping through Lolo and Dutch talking.

More and more, she was over at my house spending time with my wife and me. And more and more, so was that fuckin’ Dayden.

But it was worth it.

I loved spending time with my kid, and I loved even more that she enjoyed spending time with Dutch.

It was beginning to be commonplace to find my house full.

Soon, I would need to find a bigger one. Or add on to the one that I had.

“Look who’s up!”

Kobe.

He wasn’t sitting with the rest of them. He was on the edge of the dock fishing, a beer in one hand, and his rod in the other.

“You’re back,” I replied gruffly. “How surprising.”

Kobe had been another constant, as well as my usual group of friends that I’d made while in prison.

And though Kobe hadn’t really been that, I found more and more that I liked having him around. He was always very aware of everything that was going on, and never missed a single thing of what was going on around town.

“The new sheriff is in town,” Kobe said, ignoring my dig. “He’s somethin’.”

“What do you mean when you say ‘he’s somethin’?” I asked curiously.

“It’s Sunny,” he answered. “And he’s something.”

Sunny had surprised us all by retiring from the FBI and running for sheriff. He’d gotten the nomination, and today was his first official day.

“Now that the new soon-to-be dad is awake.” Kobe stood up. “Let’s go eat.”

“How did you know that?” I asked as I got up. “She only told me this morning.”

That was another new development. This morning, Dutch had woken me up with the news that she was two weeks late for her period. She’d then sent me a picture of a pregnancy test that she’d taken at work when she’d gotten there.

I couldn’t explain the amount of euphoria that’d rippled through me at the news.

I was going to be a dad times two.

Yee-fuckin’-haw.

“Snooped through her trash can when I went in there to take a piss earlier,” he answered. “Congrats.”

I rolled my eyes and stood up, following him to the group of people that were all waving and acting like asses.

“So, you’re a soon-to-be dad again, and you already need more sleep?” Davis jeered. “That’s not good.”

I flipped him off. “If you’re curious, I had to go deal with shit last night at the school. Pedro was acting up again. Kid’s a fuckin’ handful.”

Speaking of Pedro, he’d definitely gotten better.

What he’d also done was gotten wilder.

As in, his grandmother had asked me to step in and handle his wild, unruly ways.

And I don’t mean just last night when I caught him trying to roll the school.

He’d gotten about eight toilet paper rolls in when I’d caught him and taken him home to his grandmother, and then I’d given him a stern talking to. He’d told me that he would control himself, and then I’d left, thinking that was it.

I’d gotten another call five minutes before arriving home to tell me that Pedro was finishing the job at the school.

This time, I took him for a ride on my bike for an hour, allowed him to cool his jets and get his shit together, before again taking him home.

That time, he’d stayed. But it hadn’t been the end of my night.

After dropping Pedro off, I’d gotten a call from county telling me that Sheriff Graydon had been involved in an altercation at the jail, and he was at the hospital getting stitches.

I’d then followed him up there to make sure he didn’t pull a ghost on me and slip out into the night. Which, good thing I did, because that motherfucker had an accomplice meeting him to help him escape, and a plan in place to knock the guard out.

Unlucky for him, I’d made sure to fuck him up a little bit before forcing him to go back to the prison where he belonged. Sunny’s fill-in for the time being was useless, and hadn’t even realized that shit was going down at the hospital, or with Graydon, until well into the morning.

Needless to say, I needed the goddamn nap.

“How does everyone already know about this?” I asked, pinning my wife with a look that clearly said she was a little blabbermouth.

She snickered. “Kobe snooped through my trash. Said congratulations in front of Lolo, and then shit just spread like wildfire from there. I think half the town now knows.”

I turned my look to Lolo, who didn’t look sheepish in the slightest. “I was excited. So sue me. I’ve been an only child forever.”

I snorted. “You’ve had Bowie.”

Bowie snorted. “I’m an only child. The best, most special only child there is. And I hope it forever stays that way.”

Surprisingly, it was Aodhan who said, “If your mother has her way, you will stay that way.”

Trouble in paradise. Ruh-roh.

Danyetta didn’t say anything, but she did turn her eyes to glare at him. “Why are we even here right now?”

My question exactly.

“Speaking of that…” Dutch jumped up. “I got you all something!”

She came back with her arms full of leather.

Stopping next to me, she handed me a leather vest, then moved on to Davis, Bain, Etienne, Aodhan, Cassius, and finally, Kobe.

“Now it’s official!” she chirped. “You’re officially the Gator Bait MC!”

I looked at the leather vest, then at my name and the word ‘president’ underneath it and snorted.

“Thanks.”

“I fuckin’ like it,” Cassius said. “Thanks!”

Dutch smiled, then leaned over my back and wrapped her arms around my neck from behind.

“Love you, Wake,” she whispered into my ear.

I clutched at her wrist and pulled her tighter. “Love you more.”

“Now that that’s done…” Lolo clapped. “Let’s talk baby names! What do you think of the name Elijah?”

My wife giggled in my ear.

Bowie choked on his drink. “That’s the evil villain in the last movie I watched. He liked to poke his own fingers up his butthole.”

There was a stunned moment of silence and then I said, “Okay, so no Elijah.”

Again, my wife chimed in with the giggling.

God, I fuckin’ loved her.

“What about Tony?” Dayden asked.

My wife stiffened.

No, the name of the man she murdered wouldn’t do, either.

“Nope.” I shook my head. “Tony’s out, too.”

“How about Kyle? That’s such a strong, awesome name,” Davis suggested.

I snorted. “How about no.”

“What about Wake Westfield, Junior?” Lolo grinned. “JW for short?”

“I freakin’ like it,” Bowie announced. “Let’s go with that one.”

My wife sighed into my ear. “I kind of like that one.”

“Me, too,” I grunted.

“But what if it’s a girl?” Kobe asked.

“Well…” Dutch grinned. “Then we’ll have to go with Wakely. I think that’s even cuter.”

Eight months later

Wakely Dutch Westfield was born at 9:54 a.m. She was eleven pounds and looked like a mini sumo wrestler.

I fuckin’ loved her at first sight.

• • •

AUTHOR’S NOTE

So as you can tell, there are a few things that I left unresolved. That was on purpose, because there will be a lead to that throughout this series, leading up to I’ll Just Date Myself, the final book in the series.

I hope that you enjoyed Wake and Dutch’s book! Up next is Good Trouble, Book 2 in the Gator Bait MC Series!

Grab your copy now.