Chapter Six
“I thought we were walking home today?” Ella grumbled as she climbed into the passenger seat.
I leaned in to buckle her belt in place. “I got held up at the house, forgot about the time, and didn’t want to be late picking you up from school.”
“You forgot about your promise? You promised we’d walk today. I like walking home from school with you. I don’t like you forgetting about me.”
There was hurt in her voice.
I hadn’t phrased that well.
No, better not to try to fix it.
I quickly closed her door and took my place in the driver’s seat to find her turned toward me, arms crossed in her angry and waiting for an answer posture.
Merging into the traffic, I focused on scanning the streets for anything potentially threatening and insulating myself against her sulking silence.
I glanced at her out of my peripheral vision—damn, this girl had my number down. Silent treatment with crossed arms. Just like Kaley. Maybe they were Facebook friends and shared notes on how to manage me.
Crud.
“I didn’t forget about you, sweetheart. Never. I just lost track of time. It happens, Ella.”
I tossed her an affectionate smile and her gaze narrowed.
“But you don’t have anything to do all day but take care of me. I can’t believe you just forgot me.”
I could feel her studying me from the passenger seat and it was hard to keep my inner turmoil from my expression. Both halves of me were at war. My duty and affection for Ella, and my love of her father. It was made harder because she was my primary obligation, beyond even my love for Leland, and that forget me remark—the furthest thing from the truth—struck a nerve in me.
I pushed out a slow breath. “I didn’t forget you. I’m sorry.”
“Dads aren’t supposed to forget about their kids,” she mumbled fretfully. “Poppy Richard never broke his promises or forgot about me.”
No, not going there. What I didn’t need is the I’m not your dad discussion on top of everything I was feeling. I was still processing the leveling array of emotions that hit me earlier at the house. And in truth, they weren’t something I was ready to have complicating my role in Ella’s life.
Being a bodyguard to a little girl required being more emotionally invested than I was comfortable with, and with the present threats to all three of us I didn’t need anything else to make more difficult the task of protecting her.
Duty.
Loyalty.
Serving and protecting.
Wasn’t that what a dad was anyway?
Why was she so hell-bent to win the tug-of-war of wills?
It wasn’t like the term used to define my place in her life mattered because Ella would get from me the best of what I had to give whether I was her father or not.
Duty.
Loyalty.
Serving and protecting.
Those were my tenets. My life’s work. How I honored my sister, Olivia, in how I lived.
The day I agreed to work for Leland they became my commitment to Ella. No matter how desperately I loved him, it would never supersede my obligation to her.
My heart contracted as I accept the truth of that and the very real conflict in what I wanted and this ungodly circumstance Leland had thrust upon on our world with his homecoming.
The most powerful impulse inside me was to drive past the house and get Ella north of the border ASAP. I could leave her with Patricia, and return to figure out what the danger was Lee was in.
But my love for Leland wouldn’t permit me to do that. Running out on him while he hosted a round of Let’s Make A Deal with three known criminals with a contract out on his life violated every aspect of the commitment my heart had given him.
It was an unbearable corollary I’d never had to manage before and the right action plan seemed damn near impossible to decide upon.
Leave with Ella to protect her.
Stay with Lee to protect him.
How the hell was a man to balance being devoted and loving two people so strongly?
I turned down the street toward the house. Maybe I was overreacting. The hairs standing up on my arms and the nerves tingling in my neck said no, but the memory of Leland blasé as he relayed what little intel I’d gotten from him in the bedroom suggested he wasn’t concerned about the unpredictable, hideous change to our lives he’d brought home with him.
After stopping in the driveway, I hit the button in the visor to open the heavy iron gates.
Fuck, they were still here.
Three SUVs. Machine gun patrol on duty around the house. Leland, no doubt, went back to his meeting on the patio with the Ramoses.
So much for drawing a line in the sand.
Lee had taken my threat as cavalierly as he took everything in life and called my bluff. But his arrogance over my love for him wouldn’t serve any of us well. Not if it meant having cartel members in the house with Ella. I had to figure out a way to keep her safely away from those men until Lee got rid of them.
My mind locked on the single piece of this untenable situation I could manage: no way was I letting the Ramoses near my girl. And any doubt she was my girl was obliterated by the steely resolve turning my muscle to iron.
I parked the vehicle, leaned back in my seat, and stared at the house. “I need you to do exactly what I tell you. Listen. Learn. Remember.”
That much-used phrase snapped her whimsical alertness into full attention. “What’s wrong?”
Ella’s voice was soft and worried, and I raked a hand through my hair, feeling badly that some of my concern had broken through my façade when I had meant only to be firm.
“Nothing, sweetheart.”
“Who are those men?”
“No one you need to be concerned with. I want you to go to your room the second you’re inside the house. I’ll join you there shortly.”
She stared through the windshield, frowning.
“Is Daddy home?” she asked, impatient and now excited.
“Yes, but—”
I didn’t get to finish. She was out of the SUV and racing toward the front door before I could stop her. I sprang from the driver’s seat and sprinted after her.
In the kitchen, I found the patio doors to the back courtyard open. My heart dropped to the floor. Ella was on Leland’s lap getting showered by kisses in a circle of men that included the leader of the Ramos Cartel.