AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Haldyn slid her feet to the floor. Her legs were wobbly. But she stood on her own two feet. Just like she had done before. She could get through this. She could. No matter what. Haldyn was going to be there for Beck. She lifted her chin and stared him down. “Get out of my way, Foster. Right now.”
She looked helpless at times, yes, but he had long known Dr. Haldyn Devil Harris wasn’t a pushover. Jarrod had made that mistake early on. But the queen of the vault had reeducated him rather quickly.
The look she was giving him was the fiercest he’d ever seen from her. And with the way wispy strawberry-blond hair was falling in her eyes, despite the braid, and the bruises—hell, she knew how to make him feel like a monster. But no. He wasn’t getting out of her way. “Heather will bring the kid. You are hurting.”
He just did it, put his hands around her waist and lifted her right back into the bed. Gently. The damned woman needed a keeper. “Stay, lady. Stay. Hell, Daniel just needs to marry you and lock you away somewhere safe for your own good. You just seem to find trouble, don’t you?”
She glared up at him. Any other time and he would have smirked. He loved making this woman lose her cool. No denying that. But the stitches in her damned lip, the bruises on her pale skin, they just pissed him off.
Dr. Haldyn Devil Harris wasn’t supposed to look like this.
“Your inferiority complex where Daniel is concerned is rearing its ugly head again. So, so jealous. Very unbecoming, Foster.” She practically stuck that little nose straight up in the air.
Jarrod resisted the urge to laugh. He’d have killed to get this woman back. In a heartbeat. There was no denying that. “There’s the Harris I was expecting to see. You scared us, lady. Big time. Even me. Glad to have you back, you know. I was starting to get a bit worried about you there.”
Someone came in the door behind him. Jarrod jerked around, instinctively putting himself between her and the door. He need not have bothered.
The great Major Crimes Commander Daniel McKellen. King of Major Crimes, to Haldyn’s Queen of the Lab had just walked in.
The devil woman completely crumbled. Jarrod got out of the way as the man he considered one of his closest friends in existence scooped her up and held her while she cried. Daniel cuddled her close, kissed her forehead, her hair, just rocked her, held her tight.
Her thin arms went around Daniel’s damned neck like he’d held her that close a million times before. Maybe the doofus had. They certainly looked so pretty, and so comfortable together like that.
Jarrod had never been able to figure those two out. No one had. Haldyn and Daniel were one of the biggest mysteries of the TSP.
“It’s okay. I’m here now. You’re safe, sweetheart.” Daniel helped her back into the bed and fussed over her like an old ninny for a few minutes. Then Heather was back, with a blond woman and a little kid who looked just like Handley Barratt himself.
Well, more like Houghton than Handley. Melody was going to go all seriously gaga over that. The instant she saw the kid.
“Hal!” The little boy pulled away from Heather and climbed the bed like a monkey. “I stayed in hossibul bed. I watched Scraggle-Popps on TV. Aunt Jilly isa Scraggle-Popp.”
“I know. I’ve met her lots of times.” She opened her arms. “Come here, buddy.”
“Careful, bud, Hal is still hurting,” Heather said, all mom-like, and everything.
It was hard to imagine her as a mom sometimes. Lieutenant Heather Coleson was far too scary for mom. She didn’t talk about her family much at the TSP at all, but he knew she had two kids. Very, very young ones, he thought.
She never even mentioned anything about parenthood, unless it was case-related, or she was telling him she was heading down to the small private room that had once been a closet next to the lab to pump or something. It had taken him a moment or two to figure out what she’d meant the first time she’d told him that.
Jarrod definitely hadn’t asked for any details after that.
“My old daddy—Grandpa now—say he get them damn bad guys. He make them in trouble for hurting my Hal and my cuddin Pow.” He held Haldyn’s hand in his. He looked at Jarrod for a minute, then glared at him—looking very much like Houghton. Houghton had glared at Jarrod just like that dozens of times now, too. Probably hundreds. “Who you?”
“This is Detective Foster, Beck,” Haldyn said. She was holding the kid on her lap now. Hell, that had to hurt. “He is good friends with Melody.”
“Meldy my mommy now,” he told Jarrod, as if daring Jarrod to contradict the kid. Very much like his older brother, Jarrod suspected. Melody was Houghton’s now, too, after all. “Hoe-dun my brudder. Now he my new daddy. My old daddy is Grandpa.”
“So I heard. Beck, do you know where Grandpa is now?” Jarrod asked.
Haldyn practically hissed at Jarrod. Her arm tightened around the little boy. “Don’t you dare question him!”
The kid just glared at Jarrod, almost like he wanted to protect his precious Hal from Jarrod, too.
“Hallie, we do have questions,” Daniel said gently. “You know we have to.”
Haldyn glared at him from blue eyes, her arm tight around that kid.
“I don’t care. He is too young to question. We all know that. Focus on finding who took me and less on who rescued me, instead, boys. That is a bit more of an immediate problem. I’d like to know it’s safe for me to go home, you kno.”
