In MIB Custody [The Service Club 6] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (2 page)

She rolled her eyes at herself and clicked the shortcut that jumped her straight to her profile page. No messages. She refused to acknowledge the disappointment that made her sigh. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t spent half of last night on the phone with Kalkin. Jeez, did she really think the man didn’t have a life? She wouldn’t want a man who didn’t have a life.

And she did want Kalkin. Gods, he was the first man she had really wanted since Lowell.

You still want Lowell.

Yeah, she wanted them both, but she wasn’t going to think about that now.

“Why not? You’re already crazy. Might as well take that last leap to certifiable.”

She had fallen for a man she had never met. Kalkin. She didn’t even know for sure if that was his first name or his last, for crying out loud. It had all started on Facebook, simple conversational messages. She was a best-selling erotic romance author with a prestigious e-book publisher. Talking with strangers was part of the job. She didn’t know what most of her friends looked like, even many of the authors she spoke with daily.

Talking with someone like she had been with Kalkin was taking a risk. She knew that. He could be anyone...a rapist, even an ax murderer.

“Or the man of your dreams.”

She laughed at that, closed her Facebook page, and pulled up her latest manuscript. One thing was for sure, it was a hell of a coincidence that Kalkin lived in Tampa, the city where Lowell had gone when he had left town.

“And likely the reason they show up together in your dreams.”

* * * *

“Damn, it’s good to see you again.” Micah Chandler slapped Lowell on the back of his shoulder, then moved to sit on the sofa with Chelsea Landon and his twin brother, Braden.

Lowell looked at Chelsea. She had left town before he had, some fifteen years or so ago now. She had ended up in Florida, too, in search of a career she had believed she wouldn’t find in Horn Hill. She had also broken the Chandler twins’ hearts in the process.

And still ended up right back here just like you have.

“I wish it was under different circumstances.”

Chelsea was the reason he was back in town. Well, one of the reasons. He was here to get her statement, to dig into her memory for anything and everything she could tell him about the Miami crime lord Diego Lorena. She had fled to Horn Hill when she had discovered the man she had been dating in Miami, a private doctor by the name of Donnie Masino, had ties to the Miami crime lord. Donnie and a couple of Diego Lorena’s goons had come after her. The goons had nearly taken out Justin Bryan, a local cop and one of Lowell’s childhood friends. Justin had been stationed out front, keeping watch on Chelsea while the Chandler brothers had done their twenty-four-hour EMT shift at the firehouse. While the goons engaged Justin in a firefight, Donnie Masino had gotten inside to Chelsea.

Braden stretched an arm along the back of the sofa behind Chelsea. “So do I, though I’ve gotta say I doubt you would’ve come back if we hadn’t needed you.”

Yes, he would have, but Lowell didn’t see the need to reveal that at the moment. He had already been setting the stage, putting a plan in motion that would lead him right back here to claim the woman he had never been able to forget, the woman he had never been able to stop loving.

He glanced at Zane Kalkin, his partner and closest friend. That plan hadn’t worked out exactly as he had expected. Or maybe it had. The jury was still out on that one.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner,” Lowell told the Chandler twins. “I was workin’ a case. I didn’t find out Justin and Ben were tryin’ to contact me until I came up for air, so to speak.”

“I gather that case is wrapped up now,” Micah said.

Lowell pulled off his black Stetson and hooked it on his left knee as he settled back in the recliner adjacent to the sofa. “As much as it needed to be for me to break away from it. My superior agreed I was the best agent to send when Parker Ferrell requested FBI assistance. Our office in Tampa isn’t handlin’ the case. We’ve got a team in Miami on Lorena’s tail. But, I know the town, I know you, and you know me.”

Braden nodded. “It’s your home, even if you haven’t been here in a while.”

“She’s still single, you know.”

Lowell’s gaze jumped to Micah. He wasn’t surprised the man would bring up Danica Wallace. And, yeah, he knew she was still single. He might not have talked to Danica in nearly five years, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been keeping tabs on her. He was an FBI agent. He had access to everything he needed right at his fingertips, except the woman herself.

Danica had done what she had always said she would, what she’d always dreamed. Well, almost. She had planned to move to New York to become a famous author. Though she had never made it out of Horn Hill, she had done the rest, writing erotic romance novels that kept him up at night with a rock-solid cock and a mind stewing as to just how she had developed such knowledge.

Her novels weren’t just explicit. They were hardcore BDSM, and amazingly right on the money. The mere idea of her submitting to a man, allowing him to tie her up, to take control of her body and show her the dark pleasures that skimmed the realm of pain, flat-out pissed him off.

“I’d say, as pissed as she is at you, she’s never gotten over you,” Braden commented.

“Knowing Danica like I do, if you’re right, that’s likely only put more creases in her leather skirts.”

Leather. Christ Almighty, he had never met another woman who looked as arresting in leather as Danica Wallace.

Braden barked a laugh. “That would explain the don’t-fuck-with-me attitude she’s had the last few years.”

“Has anyone in town been giving her shit?” Lowell would find them and kick their ass to kingdom come if they had.

“You mean because of what her father did?” Micah shook his head. “No way, man. Everybody in town knows none of that was her fault. If anything, the townsfolk stood by her, made sure she knew she belonged here despite the horrible shit her father did, and offered her willing ears to listen and shoulders to cry on if she needed them. Not that she’s ever taken anyone up on them that I know of.”

“She’s realized she was wrong to blame you for what happened,” Chelsea guessed. “I don’t know that for a fact. I haven’t talked to her since I came back. But, from what you guys are saying, it sounds to me like she’s battling a mountain of guilt, both for blaming you and for pushing you away.”

“She hasn’t been with anyone since you,” Micah told him. “Not in any form of a relationship, anyway.”

“You wouldn’t know it by reading her books,” Lowell grumbled.

Micah looked sheepish. “Yeah, about those, most of the knowledge she has came from us, us and the rest of the club.”

Lowell’s gut tightened. The Chandler brothers were friends, as were the other men in The Service Club. That didn’t mean it made it set any easier hearing they’d had their hands on his woman.

Chelsea shifted on the sofa, turning slightly to look at Micah with one questioning brow raised so high it reached the tip of her autumn-leaf bangs. “It came from you?”

“Verbally, sweetheart.” Micah’s gaze was steady when it met Lowell’s again. “None of us have ever touched her. She belongs to you. We all know that, always have.”

“She comes to us now and then,” Braden chimed in. “Research is what she calls it. Let me tell you, my friend, some of the questions that woman comes up with would make Satan blush.”

Lowell felt himself grin. A few feet away in the chair across the room, Zane chuckled.

“That sounds like Dannie. She doesn’t hold much back, does she?”

Braden shot Zane an intrigued look. “You know Danica?”

“I haven’t met her face-to-face yet, but we have been talking on Facebook and the telephone.”

Braden’s attention shifted back to Lowell, amusement dancing in his eyes. “Why do I get the feeling that was your idea?”

“Because you know me.”

“And, does she know that he knows you?” Chelsea tipped her head toward Zane.

Zane shook his head and shot Lowell a narrow-eyed glance. “No. I wanted to tell her.”

“And I wanted to make sure she was ready to hear it first.” Lowell had known if Zane told her they were friends right off, she would cut communication with Zane, and Lowell would be back to square one. He had convinced his friend to hold off, never expecting that Zane would fall for her, too.

“Do you think she’s ready to hear it now?” Micah asked.

Lowell made a raspberry sound with his lips. “I doubt it.”

“She’s more likely to be furious with me for deceiving her,” Zane said.

“You’ve fallen for her, too.” Chelsea’s tone made her words more of a statement than a question.

Zane sighed. “As much as a man can fall for a woman he’s technically never met.”

Lowell watched Zane. They had been friends in the bureau first, roommates later, then worked their way to being partnered up. In many ways, they were as different as night and day. Zane came from the big city and even bigger money. He was clean cut, a class act with a dark, dominant streak he kept carefully and masterfully under wraps.

Lowell was the country boy. He would rather be in worn jeans, cowboy boots, a Stetson, and a western shirt over an Italian tailored suit any day of the week. His parents had sweated for every dime his entire life, right up until the moment his mom and dad had passed away. That dark, dominant streak was the one thing he and Zane had in common. He simply wasn’t as good as Zane at keeping his hidden.

“You’ll be good for her,” Chelsea predicted. “I don’t know anything about you beyond what I’ve seen in the few minutes you’ve been here, but I can tell already you’re a calmer soul than Lowell. It’s a good mix, one more sensitive while the other is more hard edged. Like my twins.” The smile she turned on first Micah then Braden shined with love.

“That is if they intend to share her like we do you,” Micah reminded her.

“You do, don’t you?” Chelsea’s gaze danced from Lowell to Zane and back again this time.

Zane didn’t answer. Lowell knew the man was waiting to see what he would say. He had started this. He had been the one to ask Zane to contact Danica, to friend her, and get the communication lines open. It hadn’t occurred to him that she would get under Zane’s skin, that Zane would start to want her as badly as Lowell did. They had nearly come to blows over it before leaving town this morning. Of all the things he had fantasized about doing to Danica Wallace over the years, sharing her with any other man had never been one of them.

Lowell struggled to tamp down the jealously that churned in his gut. He had shared women with Zane before. They made a hell of a good team dominating a woman and taking her to levels of ecstasy neither of them could take a woman to solo. It had taken him the full hour flight and nearly three hour drive to Horn Hill to realize, as much as a part of him hated to admit it, he wanted to be able to show Danica those pleasures, and Zane was the only man he would ever be willing to share her with.

“If that’s the way she wants it,” Lowell finally answered. “Thing is, she’s gonna go ape shit when she sees me. Findin’ out what she wants or doesn’t want is gonna be pretty damned hard when she’s too busy beatin’ my ass back to the Interstate.”

“She’s not going to be too happy with me either once she realizes who I am and how I’ve deceived her all these weeks,” Zane reminded him.

“Then don’t let her see you.” Braden said it as though it were as simple as taking candy from a baby. “And don’t let her know it’s you just yet.”

“The population of this town is, what, less than three thousand?” Zane asked incredulously. “Neither one of us will blend in very well.”

Lowell slid Zane a look. “Not when you take into account the fact that everybody in town knows me and you scream FBI special agent from head to toe. However, I think Braden has a plan to fix all that.”

“I might, if the two of you are up for it.” Braden got to his feet and started to pace the small living room. “We get the club together tonight, send one of us—” He stopped pacing to face Lowell and Zane. “By one of us, I mean one of the other guys. Randy Pope or Gavin Scott, maybe. We send a man over to her house to invite her to the meeting.”

Lowell leaned forward in the recliner, resting his forearms on his thighs. “You think she’ll show?”

Micah barked a laugh. “We know she will. That woman has been trying to weasel her way into one of the club meetings for years.”

Zane grinned. “More research?”

Braden dropped his head, chuckling as he shook it. “So she says. We give her a chance to get what she wants, and she won’t think to question why we’re finally giving in.”

“Think anyone is gonna mind?” Lowell liked the plan. It just might work.

“Hell, she’s practically part of the club anyway. She’s yours.” Braden pointed to Zane. “He’s obviously going to be part of that. If it means getting the three of you together where you belong, we’ve got your back, buddy. You ought to know that.”

Lowell’s smile came quick, but it faded just as fast. “And what’s gonna stop her from turning tail and walkin’ back out the door the second she realizes we’re there?”

“You mean beside the fact that she’ll want to stick around and kick your ass around a bit first?” Micah’s playful jab earned him a smack on the thigh from Chelsea.