Rafe
Loud banging woke me up. A quick look at the clock showed that it was just after three in the morning. As I wiped the sleep from my eyes, I realized the banging was coming from the front door. I got off the bed as stealthily as I could so as not to wake Emery and hurried into the living room to make whoever was knocking stop before they woke her. Flinging open the door, I grimaced when I found myself face-to-face with Alejandro and Kaya. Both looked shocked to see me, but the way Kaya’s eyes went wide as she stared at me reminded me that I was wearing next to nothing.
“Um, hi,” I said. “Why are you guys—”
“We have a problem,” Alejandro announced as he pushed past me into the house, pulling Kaya along behind him.
Her already shocked expression became almost comical when her eyes took in the scene by the sofa. Emery’s clothes were in a pile, as were mine, and the pillows that ran the back of the couch were tossed haphazardly on the floor.
“I, uh, need you to, uh, wake her up. Or let me wake her up,” she stammered. “It doesn’t matter who does it but she needs to be awake.”
That was when I noticed that they were both tense as fuck. Before I could say anything, Emery walked into the living room. “What’s going on?” she mumbled through a yawn.
I didn’t give a fuck about that I was only wearing boxer-briefs—but I cared a lot about the fact that Emery’s nightie had teeny-tiny spaghetti straps and was also really short. Fortunately, for everyone in the room my brother wisely looked away without my having to go full caveman.
“The security company called my cell,” Kaya said. “Someone got over the wall and broke into the house. They got as far as the upstairs hallway before they were apprehended.”
Emery lost all of her color as she stared at Kaya in disbelief. “What?”
“It was some low-life photographer from a rag publication and his neighbor that’s done time for breaking and entering. Alejandro has two people from his security team over there dealing with the police and the neighborhood security so that we don’t have to. If you go over the press will realize you’re back and that wouldn’t be good.”
Emery started shaking as Kaya told her the details. “I can’t believe they’re so desperate for a story that they’re willing to break the law,” she whispered. “They broke into my home.”
“I’m so sorry,” Kaya murmured.
“Don’t you be sorry,” Emery croaked. “It’s my fault. If you hadn’t met Alejandro, you would’ve been there. What if you’d been hurt?”
“Don’t think that way,” Kaya scolded. “We weren’t there. Elvis and I are both safe.”
Concerned about how unsteady Emery looked, I guided her to the sofa and sat her down. Grabbing the tee shirt I’d left on the floor, I motioned for her to put her hands up. She complied without a word as I put my tee on her and then draped the throw blanket off the arm of the couch over her legs.
“You can look now,” I muttered toward Alejandro.
He speared me with a look. “Put on some fucking shorts so my woman doesn’t need to see you half-naked.”
Seeing his point, I stepped into my shorts without giving him any shit. Once I had them on and zipped I sat down on the couch next to Emery and wrapped an arm around her. She turned into me with a choked sob.
“It’s going to be okay, Miel. We will take care of this.”
“It’s not,” she answered in a voice thick with emotion. “They won’t stop. They never do. They ruined my home—the one place in the world I felt safe. I had a life there and now they’ve completely obliterated it. Knowing that they got into my house makes me sick. If you and Elvis had been over there alone…”
Kaya crouched down in front of Emery and gripped her knee. “But we weren’t. They didn’t break in to hurt anyone, sweetie. That was never the intent. This was nothing more than a couple of half-wits trying to get a scoop on your whereabouts. You can’t focus on what might have happened—only on what actually did. Elvis is safe and sound somewhere in a tree in the backyard here.”
I felt Emery tense at the exact instant my body locked up. “He wasn’t on the roof just above the door to the guesthouse?” I asked.
At that point, Kaya lost all the color in her face. “No. Should he have been?”
Emery and I were up and off the couch in an instant, and all four of us piled out into the yard about two seconds after that. Sure enough, Elvis wasn’t on the roof.
“Baby boy,” Emery whisper-yelled. “Mommy needs you!”
I searched the tree line above us for signs of the big guy but he was nowhere to be found. I knew for damn sure that there was no way anyone had gotten onto our property which meant that either Elvis had gone over the wall to Emery’s house—or he’d fallen prey to a coyote or some other animal. In a panic, I whistled long and loud, completely ignoring the appearance of one of our guards, Tom, as he came around the side of the house.
“What’s going on?” he yelled
“He’s whistling for the bird,” Alejandro answered as I whistled again. “Have you seen him?”
Tom barked out a laugh and nodded as he walked over to us. “He was over at the other house. The footage the security company pulled for the cops was nuts. That badass walked in about forty seconds behind the two guys that broke in and scared the hell out of them. All hell broke loose when he started screeching—the one guy pissed himself. Besides the glass in the front door, everything else that broke was because the two that made it inside were terrified of him,” he snorted.
“They kept trying to get back down the stairs and out of the house, but he had them blocked until the cops showed up. Talk about bad luck—the one cop definitely has a huge bird phobia. He took one look at the peacock and said he was going to ask to be reassigned from this neighborhood. Apparently, he’s seen him before? Anyway, he just about shit his pants trying to get those fuckers out of the house so that he didn’t have to be near him. Once everyone was out of his house, the big bird strolled out and went into the yard. He’s probably still back there.”
I think my jaw was still on the ground when my dude suddenly appeared up on the wall between the two properties. Emery whispered his name before she took off running across the yard to get to him. He met her halfway, dropping something out of his beak onto the grass before he started rubbing up against her.
“You’re okay,” Emery cried. “Mommy was so scared, baby.”
When I got over to them, Kaya and Alejandro were hot on my tail. Before I could do anything Kaya dropped to the ground next to Emery and started loving on Elvis, too. “I’ve always said you’re the guard dog of peacocks,” Kaya praised.
Jandro looked over at me and shook his head as the bird and his girls had the mother of all reunions in my yard. The girls alternated between snuggling with Elvis and telling him what a big, brave boy he was for taking care of his home. This of course led to Emery telling him he needed to be more careful. The look Elvis gave her clearly said I’m a big boy, Mom. I had it.
As they talked, I noticed something shiny on the lawn. Realizing that it was what he’d dropped it from his beak, I walked around the girls and picked up one shiny silver earring. That’s when I saw that there were more shiny things on the pavers and the lawn. Motioning for my brother, I gestured the ground. Snickering, he helped me start collecting Elvis’s treasures.
When the girls noticed what was happening, Kaya let out a laugh. “Oh my god, Emery. Look! I haven’t seen those big ho hoops in years. I think he was cleaning out his roosts.”
By any standard, there had obviously been a lot of shit in his roosts. There were a bunch of earrings, a few rings, two bracelets, three keychains with pictures of Emery in character for Bytes, a sock, five tubes of lip balm, two lipsticks, two pens and three teething rings that I knew he liked to use to play catch.
The girls stayed down on the lawn with Elvis for another few minutes before Alejandro and I talked them into going back into the guesthouse. Emery looked so upset to leave him that I left the door to the house open and didn’t say a word when Elvis sauntered in like he owned the place. He took about two minutes to stroll through the house—mostly, I thought, to see where the bedroom was—before he decided that he was either done with all the excitement or flat out exhausted from however many trips he’d made over the wall. Without further ado, he got up onto the entertainment center, perched so his tail hung over the edge, and closed his eyes.
After I quickly fixed the couch cushions everyone sat down. When I held out my arm Emery didn’t hesitate to curl up under it so that she was nestled into my side. I ignored the stunned expression on Kaya’s face as the girls began talking softly. Mostly that consisted of Kaya reminding Emery half a dozen times that all was well while Alejandro assured them both that we’d all meet in the morning with the security team to go over things in detail. When Emery started to yawn Kaya announced that it was time for everyone to go back to bed.
“I forgot to let you know that Gigi and Dean will be here tomorrow night!” Kaya exclaimed. “I can’t wait for them to meet Alejandro.”
Emery squeaked excitedly and smiled huge. “I’m so excited—I can’t wait.”
I raised my brows as I looked at my brother for an explanation.
“The people who raised Kaya. Emery’s known them her whole life.”
“Ah,” I nodded as I made a mental note to ask Emery about her family. She’d met mine and I wanted to meet hers as soon as possible. Unless they were estranged, which I realized was a possibility since she hadn’t mentioned them and they weren’t burning the world down to find her.
The girls hugged before my brother and his woman took their leave.
Standing at the door with Emery under my arm, I gestured to where Elvis was sleeping. “Is he going to be okay up there?”
“He’ll let it be known when he’s ready to go out,” she yawned.
I snickered because I knew she was right. To make it easier to hear him I left the door to the bedroom open a crack before I climbed in beside Emery, pulled her into my arms, and waited for her to find sleep. It didn’t take long. I let myself fall asleep seconds after I felt her body relax into slumber.