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“She’s still in Masterson. With the Davis brothers.” Zoey’s mouth tightened. She’d shared the secret with Haldyn before. The hottest actors in Hollywood were three of Zoey’s biological brothers, discovered during the Eastman thing. They wanted nothing to do with their Finley Creek family at all. “I worry about her, honestly. You can’t hide from the darkness either. She’s hiding from it, Mads jumps at every inch of darkness that gets close. Shelby is handling it better than they are. But how much is that her hiding things from us, or that she still hides herself away sometimes?”
“I don’t know.”
“All I ever wanted was to protect Pen from the darkness. Now, it’s her constant companion. Pen, and those girls. We’ve decided to get her a psychiatric support dog. She’s having dissociative episodes, from the PTSD. But sometimes, our cat is enough to bring her back into focus. To ground her back in reality. I’m hoping a PSD with appropriate training will help her even more. We’re going through the process, and Luc will pay for the dog when the right one is found.”
She would have said more, but then Shelby was there. And Madison.
It was time.
They were going inside. To see if there were secrets hidden within.
Powell wrapped her fingers around Haldyn’s. They were going to do this.
And they were all going to do it together. One step at a time.
52
Jarrod caught up with her just outside the door. He wrapped his fingers around her elbow and pulled her back. He might not be able to control much about this little party, but he didn’t want Haldyn going in there first. He just didn’t.
He was fast getting the idea here that the cool, prissy, slightly snobbish icicle exterior she’d always shown him hid a bundle of nerves that were eating that woman alive.
“What is it? Something I need to know?” she asked, looking up at him.
Her mouth looked perfect. The pair of stitches from Handy Handley’s bodyguard’s handy handiwork were out now. They wouldn’t leave much of a mark eventually. Her bottom lip was pink and perfect, and he wanted to kiss her all over again.
Hell. He wanted to kiss her again and again. He wanted to pull her close and just kiss her—right in front of the people surrounding them. Like he had the right to do just that.
He wanted to drag her off back to his lair and just do things to her. Things that only a man and the woman he wanted could do to each other.
Maybe he was as bad as Gunnar.
She was still looking at him, with those big blue eyes that stabbed an unsuspecting man in the gut. “Just doing my job, ma’am. I am supposed to be guarding your body. That means not letting you go inside first.”
Lame, and he knew it.
“Powell has already been here four times. Who do you think came with her?” There was that little stuck-up sniff she did that got right beneath his skin. He almost smiled. He’d missed that. She hadn’t looked at him like that in at least three hours.
“You two really are joined at the gorgeous hips, aren’t you?” And they had been here. Alone. At Scott’s lair. Four times. Jarrod was seriously going to delve into that information later. He leaned close enough to whisper in her ear. “Keep looking at me like that and I will just have to kiss you again. I can’t help myself.”
But the information they’d been there before was niggling his brain. Maybe that was what that “boss” had wanted with them both before? Something to do with this place?
But if that was the case, and Shelby and Zoey’s family had all pitched in, and Charlotte, and Madison—then why had only Haldyn and Powell been targeted?
It was another question for the list. It was an angle he and Gunnar were going to discuss first opportunity they had.
“She’s my best friend. I spend more time with her than I do my younger sisters. No one on the planet knows me better than she does.”
Jarrod studied Gunnar’s little rabbit. Bending down to kiss Powell would give a man a crick in his neck. But Haldyn was six or seven inches taller than her little friend. Just the right height for a man Jarrod’s size to capture those lips with his own.
Of course, he supposed Gunnar could just lift Powell right off those little feet if he wanted. Jarrod could do the same with his little rabbit. Just lift her into his arms and?—
“Foster?” She shot him that snotty, irritated look that had always gotten right under his skin again. Reminding him instantly of how he really felt about the woman in front of him. Fascinated. That was how he felt about this woman. Utterly fascinated. “Are you even in there today?”
“I’m starting to doubt it.” He stepped back. He wanted to do the opposite. And that just wasn’t him. “You’re glaring at me again. You know what that does to me. I can’t concentrate on the world around us when you look at me that way.”
Her eyes widened. Her perfect mouth trembled. “Stop it! Be serious.”
She was the kind of woman who deserved serious from whatever man she let close to her. Some other lucky guy would get all wrapped up in her eventually.
