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“I was just gonna fetch her bag for her,” Thane says, reminding me that I still have my hand splayed across his bare chest.
Henley’s lack of clothing the past few hours reminded everyone that this was meant to be a pool party. They stripped down shortly after her first backflip on the inflatable trampoline. I haven’t seen this much skin since I first entered Chains, the exclusive BDSM club.
No, I am not a part of the BDSM community. Marcus, my former detail, owns Chains. He kept his private life secret for years until he exposed it to bring his girlfriend’s stalker out of hiding. We had no clue we were looking in the wrong direction until Dexter popped three bullets into me before pinning me to my unmarked car with a steel garden rake.
“You have a butler, remember?” My words come out pissy since my past popped in for a visit.
“And a maid, two pool men, and a piano teacher who gives fantastic head, but I’d still give it all away for ten seconds beneath the sheets with Hen—”
I wallop him so hard that nothing but battered breaths leave his mouth before I snatch Henley’s bag out of Riggs’s grip and guide her and Lucy to my truck.
Thane’s voice is still wheezy when he checks, “Thursday, right?”
It’s the fight of my life not to slam the passenger side door shut before Lucy can climb in when Henley stops clambering over her booster seat to answer Thane’s question with a head bob. “But it will have to be after two. Lucy has her first dance class Thursday morning.”
“Since when?”
Henley slots her backside into her seat before lifting her eyes to mine. “Since Chelsea offered during lunch. Don’t worry, it won’t cost you anything. She’s doing it pro bono.”
“And then Uncle Thane is going to teach us self-defense,” Lucy announces as I place her into her seat. “Then we won’t have to worry about snakes like Nathan Banks.” Her face brightens. “That rhymes.”
Henley saves me from asking what the fuck I missed by whispering in my ear. “He told her she must have bought her swimsuit from the grandma section because it was ugly and made her look fat.”
Lucy proves what I have always suspected. She has supersonic hearing. “Henley punched him in the nose for saying I’m fat.”
“I did not,” Henley defends, her squeal ear-piercing. “I told him if his momma doesn’t teach him better manners, I’d punch her in the nose.”
“He ran away crying,” Lucy announces, pleased with herself. “Then Aunt Molly got cranky.”
“I didn’t know she was your sister-in-law until after I threatened to punch her,” Henley explains, spinning my head further. You can barely get a word in with Lucy as it is, but it’s been impossible since Henley arrived. They can both talk underwater. “You didn’t introduce me.”
“Because she isn’t my sister-in-law,” I reply with a grimace. “The Ashburns have been trying to get rid of her since Thorin’s Vegas elevator quickie.”
“Uncle Thorin is away on business,” Lucy explains, as capable of reading Henley’s shocked expression as I am. She shifts her focus back to me. “What’s an elevator quickie?”
Certain this isn’t a conversation I can participate in today, I buckle Lucy in, jog around my truck, then slot behind the steering wheel.
Henley hisses when I crank the ignition and put the gearstick into first. A noise always popped from her lips when my hand made contact with her thigh on the drive here, but this one sounds more from pain than excitement.
“You okay?”
With her eyes facing the front, she nods.
I’m confident she is lying, but instead of calling her out in front of my in-laws, who are stretched across the stairs of their family home, farewelling us, I grind my back molars together before commencing our short drive home.
For every bump I hit, a groan escapes Henley’s lips. I try to tell myself they’re groans of pain, but my fucked-up head isn’t hearing them that way. It sounds like she’s moaning, and every whimper has me giving Thane’s rambling more credit than it deserves.
A steel plate may be the only way I can leave my truck without making a spectacle of myself.
Henley saves me the embarrassment by ramming her elbow into my ribs as we enter the driveway of our home.
My home, I mentally chastise.
A grin tugs on my lips when I realize what she is pointing out. Lucy is out cold in her car seat, sleeping with her mouth open.
“I can’t recall a Fourth of July event when she hasn’t crashed on the way home. She loves swimming, but it zaps all her energy. After filling her belly and washing off the dirty water, she’ll be out until tomorrow.”
I park, shut down my truck, then jog to the passenger side door to lift a sleeping Lucy into my arms.
