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“It’s hard to sleep when someone’s hunting you down,” I stated flatly.
His smile dissolved immediately. Cole’s eyes narrowed as he shifted uncomfortably.
“Huntingyou?”
“At work, yes,” I answered. “Some guy showed up at the restaurant looking for me before my shift. A dark-haired stranger who didn’t speak English.”
I watched carefully as their expressions completely changed. I had a hunch they would.
“You know who it is, don’t you?”
They didn’t answer at first, which was disconcerting. But then I saw them relent. Silently they came to some mutual agreement, and their entire body language seemed to change. My gaze however, kept going back to the strange-looking piece of leather around Joshua’s neck. It looked vaguely familiar. Like I should somehow know what it was.
“You can answer me now or at three o’clock in the morning, I really don’t care,” I said, suppressing a shiver. “But I’m not leaving until you do.”
The air was colder here at the ocean’s edge, and there was a breeze now too. Just beyond the doorway however, I could feel a welcome heat flowing outward from the warmly-lit house.
“Come inside,” said Evan, extending a big, tattooed hand. “And we’ll tell you everything.”
Eleven
QUINN
If the house looked big from outside, the inside was absolutely cavernous. There were rooms everywhere. Archways gave way to halls cut with even more archways, many hosting alcoves filled with art, sculptures, or colorful ceramics.
The ceilings were high-flung, and the beautifully-tiled floors gave way to a modern, yet Spanish-influenced aesthetic. Everything in the house was excessive, but functional. From the plush furniture to the large scattering of Persian rugs, runners, and other accoutrements that tied the rooms together.
My first thought, as sexist as it sounded, was that there was no way these three men decorated this place. And yet everywhere I looked, I saw reminders of them. There was African artwork, carvings, and decorations. Pillows and lamps with a Moroccan or middle-eastern flare.
They’re filling the house with reminders of the places they’d been, I realized silently.Maybe they even brought some of these things back.
Everything was a mish-mosh, really. It shouldn’t have worked. Yet somehow, possibly because the place itself was so cavernous, it actually did.
“Ah, thank you.”
Resting on an ornate yet comfortable couch in some kind of sitting or game room, I graciously accepted the mug of hot tea Joshua offered. I knew it would kill any chance I had of sleeping tonight. Unless they decaffeinated it on purpose, for the sake of the baby inside me. From the yellow envelopes I’d received so far, that just seemed like something they’d do.
“The man who came looking for you,” Evan asked. “Was he South American?”
I shrugged. “I have no earthly idea. Why?”
“Because the man who I saw following you was,” said Cole. “Colombian, most likely. Just like the man who attacked Evan, right after he dropped you off.”
“Not attacked,” Evan frowned. “Followed. After all, it was me who—”
“You were attacked the night you went out with me?” I gasped.
Evan shot his friend a scathing look. But Cole wasn’t having it.
“We agreed we’d tell her everything, remember?” the big man said. “She’s carrying our child. She’sinthis with us, whether we like it or not.”
His incredible blue eyes shifted to me, and for a split second they roamed a little. I got the distinct sense he was seeing me in a different light. Not just as someone within their closed little circle, but possibly for the first time, actually seeing me as awoman.
Cole remained standing, his two corded forearms crossed over his chest. Evan and Joshua however, sat down on the couch opposite mine.
“You already know we were military,” Joshua explained, “but we had very different beginnings. I was a Ranger, and Evan a Green Beret. Cole here dominated BUDS school, and became a SEAL. None of us even knew each other until JSOC threw us together on back-to-back missions. The results were outstanding. We ended up working together for a long time after that.”
He spoke softly, in a midnight voice that still carried through the large room. But he also spoke with an almost nostalgic reverence.
