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“No. I sleep like the dead. Oh no! Is Tanner okay? Where is he? Why would Jake arrest him?” She scowled. How could Jake do that? Tanner was a good guy. He didn’t deserve to be arrested. Was he still in jail? Did she need to go down there and get him out?
No one arrested her friends.
“Jake didn’t arrest him. If he had, then Tanner would probably still be locked up.”
“That’s not very nice. Tanner is a good guy.”
Butch snorted.
“But why are you mad? You told me where you were going. It’s not your fault I didn’t take it in.”
“Because I shouldn’t have left you.” With a gentle hand, he cradled her bruised cheek. “If I’d taken you with me, then you wouldn’t have gone to see Chandler, and this wouldn’t have happened. Then I got the call about Flick, and I couldn’t go looking for you.”
“What call about Flick?” she asked. “Is she all right?”
“She had a scare. She went into early labor.”
“Oh my God!” she gasped. Here she was, worrying over silly things while Flick had been going through that. She tried to climb off Butch’s lap, but he held her steady. “Where is she? Is she okay? What happened?”
“She’s fine. They stopped the labor at the hospital. She’s on bed rest for what’s left of her pregnancy though. And West is losing his freaking mind. He was fluffing pillows, for God’s sake.”
She didn’t see what was wrong with that. “I need to see her.”
“Later. She’ll be home in a few days. You can help keep her entertained if you want.”
She wanted to see her now. But she probably needed rest. And she wasn’t in a state to enter a hospital.
“Maybe I can clean her house for her or something before she gets home. Something to help.”
“Perhaps,” he said. “What did you mean when you said you were going to use the money from Chandler to rent a place?”
She took a deep breath. “I don’t want to tell you this part.” She licked her lips. “This is going to sound terrible.”
“Just tell me.”
“Chandler offered me money to come to Emily’s wedding,” she blurted out. “I wasn’t going to come, but he called me and said he’d pay me. I still told him no, that I wasn’t coming. So Mom called me, guilting me into coming. And then Chandler told me he’d give me twenty grand if I came for the entire week and was a bridesmaid. I should have realized he would back out.”
“That asshole.”
“That’s Chandler for you. Likes to pretend he’s this great guy when he’s a weasel. But he didn’t hit me so you can’t go after him,” she added hastily.
“So, who did hit you?”
The question didn’t come from Butch, but from a large, dark-haired man who stood in the doorway to Butch’s bedroom. She got the feeling this was another Malone brother. An older one. He had a cold, commanding air about him as he stared down at her.
This was a man you’d never dare lie to.
Only, she was about to.
“Do not answer that if it’s going to be a lie,” he warned.
“Alec,” Butch said in a low voice. “Don’t speak to her like that.”
This was Butch’s oldest brother? Whoa. He was more than slightly terrifying.
Alec stared at Butch. “When Jake called me to tell me that you’d become a guardian, I didn’t know whether I could believe him. Then I wondered what the hell was going on.”
“Nothing is going on. This is for real. Lara is mine. I’m hers. And she’s staying here.”
Alec studied her. What did he see? Was she lacking? Not worthy of his brother? She started to shrink into herself. What would she do?
“The bunkhouse isn’t a place for a woman. You’ll move her to the main house.”
“I was thinking about that,” Butch agreed.
“Wait . . . you’re not kicking me out?” she asked.
Alec narrowed his gaze. “Why would I do that?”
“I . . . you don’t know me.”
“Only one way to solve that, isn’t there? Get all the stuff you need and move her in. Introduce her to Mia and Seb, then let her rest. She looks exhausted and everyone except West and Flick is coming for dinner tonight.”
“We don’t need to move,” she protested. “I like it here.”
“Not happening,” Alec said. “It’s not safe out here for a woman nor comfortable. And the walls are thin.”
Oh. Right.
She felt her cheeks grow red.
29
Lara wondered if she’d hit her head and woken up in some sort of alternate universe.
She peeked into the dining room.
It was utter chaos. Filled with about a hundred Malone men.
Or that’s what it felt like. In reality, there was six of them since West wasn’t there and Alec was in his office. But they were larger than life. Loud. Boisterous. One of them started coughing as he swallowed some beer wrong, and another one whacked him on the back.
