AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Max eyed Hunt. “You’re going to let this happen?”
“I think it’s the best solution on many levels.” Hunt didn’t even try to hide the grin that he was poking at Max for some reason.
“Then you’ll accept full responsibility, too,” Max warned.
Hunt grinned wider. “Oh, I take full credit for putting the two of you back together.”
Max’s jaw cracked. “And if she gets hurt because of it.”
Hunt eased up. “If she’s here, you, me,Chase,” Hunt emphasized, because he was ex-military, a trained soldier, “the feds, the ranch hands, we can all keep an eye on her. She’ll have some freedom here. In a hotel room, she’ll have four walls, three meals a day, and that’s it.”
It sounded like fancy jail.
She had no doubt it would be boring as hell. She’d go stir-crazy in a matter of days.
The ranch was the better option as far as her comfort and preference, but not at the expense of making Max angry, uncomfortable, and possibly hate being at his own home because she was here. Not to mention the jeopardy it put him and everyone else in. “The hotel is fine. I’ll go grab my shoes upstairs and we can leave.” She left the room and headed upstairs.
“Hasn’t she been through enough?” She wasn’t sure who Mr. Wilde asked that question of, but no one answered, and she knew why.
Max probably thought she deserved all she got.
Didn’t matter. She was right back where she’d always been since they broke up. Alone and on her own.
What she needed to focus on was finding the thumb drive her brother left with her. Then she could go back to her life and leave Max to his, just the way he wanted it.
Chapter Eight
Max felt trapped in a nightmare of his own making.
Hunt took advantage. “You know you want her here.”
“She didn’t have anywhere to go. You insisted it be here and not your place. I thought it would be one night. Maybe two. Not indefinitely.” He’d go mad having her this close and not being able to do anything for her.
“You’re welcome,” Hunt teased.
“This is not what I wanted.”
“Are you sure about that? Because the second I told you she’d been hurt and was in the hospital, you couldn’t get to her side fast enough.”
Denying it would only make him look stupid.
Hunt went on like this wasn’t a disaster in the making. “You had to see for yourself if she was okay. I get it. Believe me, I do. I feel the same way about Cyn. But how are you going to feel, day in and day out when she’s in protective custody,somewhere, for however long it takes, and you don’t knowwhereshe is, orhowshe is? I won’t know. No one but the FBI will know.”
“And we won’t tell.” Agent Gunn got in on the action.
Max swore and shifted his weight, knowing Hunt was pushing because he thought his heart was in the right place by putting Max and Kenna both on the spot when things were already over and done between them.
“You’ll hardly ever see her. You’ll be out working sunup to sundown. Dad and Chase can babysit her while the feds they assign can watch the property and her, too.”
Max could feel her in the house and smell her in the room. He heard her crying at night and screaming out during a nightmare.
She was already everywhere.
She was always with him, in his memories and his dreams.
Having her this close would make it near impossible to avoid her, let alone put her out of his mind the way he tried to do all the time and failed miserably.
He got in his truck this morning to run an errand and smelled her. When they broke up, he smelled her on his clothes, in the truck, he found things like hair ties and lip balms, a pair of earrings. Little reminders of her everywhere. It took weeks before he stopped finding things or seeing things that reminded him of her twenty times a day.
