Grayson
“Hell, no. You aren’t stayin’ at a hotel. I got two unused bedrooms, both boys off to college.” I’m not sure which of Isabella’s uncles is speaking but I shake his hand and endure another back-slapping hug.
“Thanks, Uncle?”
“I’m George, the preacher-bartender.” He laughs and nods at the sheriff, sitting at a wooden desk who looks up and waves.
I’m guessing this police station was probably built in the seventies, the furniture even older. It has three scratched but polished desks, wooden file cabinets and old desktop computers. A blue metal door in the back leads to a kitchen, an interrogation area, and holding cells.
Isabella yawns, shakes her head, and shuts down her laptop. “It’s like Xavier disappeared. We waited all day. Where the hell is he?”
“I say he either gave up, landed in a nearby city, or took a flight under an assumed name. Who knows? But your Uncle George is waiting. We should go.” I shake Josh’s hand and we leave him sitting in front of his monitor, face lit by the blue screen.
This is no damn good. As the sheriff so clearly pointed out, the justice system hasn’t exactly been in my favor. Maybe, buckshot in the ass is exactly what Xavier Cross needs to stay clear of Isabella and her family.
We pile into a Chevy van, drive under a blinking light in the center of town, and park on a gravel driveway in front of another split-level home.
I climb out first, hold out my hand, and Isabella takes it. Having her close, her fingers in mine makes my desire flare along with a fierce sense of needing to protect her.
Isabella lifts a brow with a crooked smile. “What’re you thinking?”
“I’m picturing Xavier meeting up with your clan.”
She giggles. “He’ll never know what hit him, literally.”
A pretty gray-haired woman, about fifty, opens the door at the top of the cement steps. “Oh Isabella, you look so much like a big-city girl, I hardly recognized you. Welcome. Come in, come in.” She gives Izzy a big hug then does the same to me.
After a day full of embraces, I’m finally getting the hang of it. I shoot my amused fiancé a wink over her aunt’s shoulder.
“You must be Grayson. I’m Lois. You hungry? Sit down in the kitchen. Sorry, I couldn’t be there earlier. I had to finish up my shift.”
“My aunt’s a neo-natal nurse,” says Isabella, huffing to follow up the stairs.
At the thought of babies, I get this picture of Izzy pregnant and paternal warmth hits me. Until I met her, I never thought about the white picket fences. Now, after being with her large family, I want that and more. I imagine having a dozen boys running around my Manhattan apartment.
No, no. We’ll buy a huge house in Long Island. Get a nanny to help out so Isabella can work, if she wants to. This is how my mind races as I sit in a mustard yellow kitchen with orange Formica counter tops.
“I’m going to stake out the perimeter.” George nods at me and I nod back, wishing I had a weapon. I should’ve asked at the station.
Lois kisses her husband on the cheek and ruffles his hair. “I’ll send out some coffee, hun, in just a moment.”
“Thank you, sweetheart.” Their eyes meet in the way that couples who’ve been married for years, do. I’m sure much is unsaid and yet communicated in that look.
He leaves by way of a sliding glass door onto a deck, then Lois points to an antique table in the middle of the kitchen.
“Sit, please.” A platter of cheese, assorted crackers, and sliced sausage is slid in our direction. There’s also warm brown bread right out of the oven.
Isabella slices off a thick hunk and gives it to me. “Try some cheese. It’s local. The best.”
Lois blushes as she takes off her coat, revealing her light blue scrubs, patterned with tiny baby things. “Oh, it’s nothing fancy. Not like you’re used to.”
“I’m really sorry to put you out like this.”
These people are way too nice for the likes of Xavier. After meeting all her family, I know I should’ve dealt with my nemesis in New York.
“Put me out? Why, all the other wives are green with envy. I expect them to start barging in any second. They’ve invited themselves to a potluck, late-night dinner. They all want to meet Isabella’s millionaire.
My net worth is closer to a billion. However, today I’d give it all away to keep Izzy and her family safe.
My love seems contented as she sits back in her chair, closes her eyes, and smiles. Is this where she’d rather be? In Minnesota?
My heart heavy, I put my arm over her shoulder. “Do you like it here?”
Her brows shoot up. “Of course, why?”
Shit.
She pushes on the corners of my frown with two fingers. “Hey, I didn’t say I wanted to live here. You’re my home, now.”
My eyes actually water and I have to clear my throat. What the hell just happened? It’s probably lack of sleep and all that hugging. It can fuck with your head.
Before I can respond and tell her what that means to me, the doorbell rings.
Me and some male family members help Lois pull out three card tables and place two wood inserts into the kitchen table. After, we gather chairs and benches from all over the house. A few folding ones are carried in by more as they enter the front door.
“Are the little ones all tucked in?” Worried about Izzy’s niece, I catch Josh’s ear as the women shoo us out of the kitchen.
“Like you suggested, they’re having a bible school sleep-over. Your man Slate has them well-guarded. He called in some favors as well. Those guys looked more than capable.”
“If he vouches for them, you can be sure they are… By the way? I could use a weapon.”
“You know how to use one?” Josh’s eyes narrow as he studies me like a lawman.
“College marksman, four years in a row.”
Nodding, he unlocks a gun rack and hands me a Winchester rifle with a box of bullets. I make sure it’s loaded with the safety on and keep it close by.
“Thanks.”
Soon, we’re all seated with Isabella at my right and she says grace. “Thank you, God, for this food, my family, my friends, and my love. Keep us safe and send Xavier Cross out of your heavenly grace and straight to he–”
“-Isabella!”
“Heck.” She snorts out a small giggle. “Sorry, Mom.”
After that, everyone talks and eats at once and I’m a bit at a loss to keep up. My life is full of well-mannered board members, CEO’s, and investors. This? This is a three-ring circus.
Finally, everyone departs with a couple men promising to keep guard outside. I check in with Slate and he assures me the kids couldn’t be safer. Why then, do I feel so damned uncomfortable?
I join Josh for a while outside and come in the house around midnight.
“Anything?” Isabella searches my face and I shake my head, no.
Lois stands from where she was quietly watching television. “Alright, you two. You’re going to get some sleep. No arguments. We got this.”
She leads us down a long hall and into a room with an antique sleigh-bed and thick, warm, hand-sewn quilts.
“I can’t possibly. I’m too wound up.” Isabella looks to me to defend her cause but I won’t. The poor girl hasn’t slept well in days.
“Clean towels are in the bathroom, across the hall. Holler if you need anything else.” She yawns. “I’m turning in, too.”
I hold up my rifle. “We can close our eyes for a minute, okay?”
Lois, turns on a heel and shuts the door firmly.
Alone for the first time since leaving the airport, I find my lover’s lips and gaze into her eyes. They’re red from lack of sleep and lined with dark circles. I fold down the quilt, sit her down on the bed, and stand in front of her patting my thigh. Up comes one foot, I unlace a sneaker, then the other. Heaving out a heavy sigh, I sit with my back on the headboard, pull her head onto my lap, and turn off the light.
Her hand finds mine and grasps it. “Do you think he’ll come?”
“I don’t know. But if he does, we’re ready.”
“I love you, Gray.”
My hand squeezes hers back. “Love you, too, babe.”
Soon, she’s breathing regular while I stare into the dark, listening, waiting, watching.
In the middle of the night, George shouts, a gun fires, and a door slams.
“Stay put.” I slip out from under her and grab the rifle, praying I won’t have to use it. If I do, I pray my aim is good.
“Is it him?” Isabella is on my heels in seconds.
“For fuck’s sake, Izzy. Get your aunt and lock yourselves in the bedroom.”
“Don’t worry about me. I got this covered.” Lois is in the living room standing with a shotgun aimed out the bay window.
The upper floor covered, I creep down the stairs to the front door and open it a crack, rifle pointing.
Suddenly, a red laser dot appears on Isabella’s chest.
“Down.” I throw her to the landing, cover her body with mine, and glass shards explode.
Fuck.
Josh shouts, “Police. Put the gun down, son.”
A shotgun makes a gaping hole in the wood overhead and Isabella shrieks.
“You guys okay in there?” Josh is closer, now, his voice coming from the front yard.
“Yeah. Just a few cuts, nothing serious.” Realizing I have my full weight on Isabella I roll off.
Her eyes are wide as she points to the glass pieces sticking out of my arms. “You’re bleeding.”
“Looks worse than it is. Stay low. Okay?”
She nods and finally obeys.
“Dammit!” Another ear-splitting blast shatters the sliding glass door behind where Lois was pointing and something or someone thumps on the main floor.
I hold my breath and fear the worst until she says, “God damn it, George, I broke our back door but I got one, honey.”
“Okay sweetheart, sit tight. We may have another.” Her husband’s voice is muffled, sounding like he walked outback.
After I feel enough time has passed, I rise to my feet with my hand on Isabella’s head and peer out the five-inch shotgun hole. When my eyes adjust to the dark, I see movement, and for a moment, the front seat of a car is lit up.
I don’t fucking believe it. Xavier is parked in the street, just sitting there. And he’s unarmed. Otherwise, I’d kill him.
I take aim at the tires, fire once, and just miss. Before I can adjust for the next shot, he guns the engine and roars off into the distance.
“Josh? George? That was him!” I run out the door and into the front yard but the car is long gone.
Josh jumps in his cruiser, sirens blazing, and there’s nothing more I can do, other than wait.
“God dammit!” I climb back up the steps and pull a worried Isabella into my arms.
Hours later, the uncles board up the house, Lois brags how she shot an intruder full of buckshot, and I mainline coffee.
Every shard hurts like hell as Izzy picks glass out of my arm with tweezers.
“I fucked up. Xavier is still out there, somewhere.” The light is best in the upstairs bathroom for her ministrations where I sit on the john.
“Uh huh.” She pulls an especially large sliver from my back, and I suck in my breath.
“Mother fucker.”
“Sorry.”
“No problem. I need to ask you something.”
“Sure.”
“Is there some reason, other than getting back at me that Xavier might want to blackmail you?”
“What do you mean?”
“The only thing that motivates him is money, and lots of it. He’s taking a lot of risk for little gain.”
“I got about three hundred dollars in my savings… ” She laughs a bit too nervously and suddenly it dawns on me what it might be.
“The Houston Project. The government gave you an assignment, didn’t they?”
She nods, her lips locked tight.
“They told you not to tell anyone?”
She shrugs.
Fucking Government.
“God damn it Isabella. What’re you working on?”
“Just some code.”
I stand, pace and throw my hands up in the air and bandages go flying. “Just some code. Look at this place. For Christ’s sake, your aunt just shot someone. You could’ve been killed!”
“I’m pretty sure that project has nothing to do with this.”
Damn, the woman is so naïve, it kills me. I roll my eyes, and call for her uncle, “George? We need to talk.”