Shit. That’s gotta hurt.
He met Mac’s gaze and clocked his partner’s reaction—they’d come to the same conclusion.
“Arden’s had it set up for exactly this kind of situation,” Kyle went on, and Colin recognized the hint of regret in his voice. “You’ll have your own space, your own rooms. Colin and Mac will be there with you.”
“And I’ll be by with anything you need after you settle in,” Arden added quickly. “I want…we all want you to feel comfortable here.”
Maren nodded. “Okay. Thank you. Both of you.” She looked around the room and her gaze landed on Colin last. “All of you.”
She drove all night with her sister’s kid and a dead man’s message echoing in her brain and she’s sitting here answering questions without flinching for people who don’t fully trust her. Right after learning she shouldn’t have trusted her sister.
He pushed down his anger. Every instinct told him Maren was innocent, that she needed their full support, not doubts.
Well, if they couldn’t give it to her, he would.
EIGHT
Maren stretchedand listened to her back popping as she stood in the safehouses’s master bathroom. The long drive had just about done in her back, and she hoped a long, hot shower would help. Juni was in the other room with their two new bodyguards, going on about Pretzel and all the other puppies. Her mind flashed to earlier in the day, the look on Juni’s face when Jodie brought them into the room holding the three new puppies. Juni gravitated toward the biggest one.
“I’m going to call him Pretzel.” She smiled up at Maren.
“Oh, like from Bluey?”
“Yeah.”
Maren had to admit, the puppy did look like the cartoon character, even if he was a Malinois puppy and not a chihuahua.Ugh, Bluey though. Juni loved that show, and yes, Maren liked it too, but at the same time, Bluey’s dad made Maren feel like she wasn’t doing enough to be a good parent.
For example, most parents don’t end up in safehouses with people they’ve never met.
Stop it. You got her to safety as quickly as you could. And these are good people. They’re helping you.
Even if they don’t trust you yet.
That was easy enough to pick up on.
Maren stripped down, vowing never to wear those clothes again, turned on the shower, and stepped in. The hot water felt amazing streaming down her back and she just stood there for several minutes before picking up the shampoo. She opened the top without reading the bottle, and the shower was filled with the scent of coconuts.
As Maren lathered up her hair, her mind played over the rest of the surreal day, starting with their arrival at the safehouse just up the road from Watchdog, like Kyle had said. It looked like an older farmhouse, but fixed up nicely. Arden had gone back home, but Kyle gave them a tour of the house, including the panic room in the basement. Maybe that was the strangest part of this already strange day. It felt like a scene straight out of a movie, complete with handsome bodyguards.
The most attractive bodyguard was Colin Hale. When she’d seen him at the gate, she’d been too scared to really notice him beyond ‘large man who holds my fate in his hands.’ But seeing him across the kennel yard, at ease and talking to Mac, her body responded in a way she hadn’t felt since becoming Juni’s guardian. She put it off on adrenaline.
But sitting beside him in the conference room, watching him watch her, taking note of his every expression…it felt like he trusted her, even if no one else in the room did, except Arden. Well, and maybe Mac, but he seemed reflexively friendly. Maren detected a slight accent that put him in Wisconsin, Northern Illinois, or Minnesota—home of Midwest Nice.
Maren grinned. Juni was having none of it, and it seemed to bother the big guy. Almost as much as Juni’s attention bothered Colin.
That’s a shame.
And besides, you shouldn’t care. You’ve got Juni to worry about.
Once the hot water started to run out, Maren turned off the shower and toweled herself off. She was surprised to see she’d been in the shower for over half an hour. Colin had left her suitcase beside the bed, after insisting on unloading it and Juni’s and bringing them inside, which was very sweet of him.
And just part of his job.
Maren got out a change of clothes and got dressed. The mirror in the bathroom was fogged over so she looked at herself in the one over the dresser and immediately wished it were fogged over, too.
Colin would have broken his back if he’d tried bringing in the gigantic bags under my eyes.
But, at least she was clean now and didn’t smell like the road. She’d give Juni a bath before bed, just like their usual routine. Maren thought it best to try and keep to some sort of normalcy.
