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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.
