Page 46 of Burn Bag (Owens Protective Services #31)

KAVANAUGH

As soon as they drove away, Edu smacked me upside the head. Hard.

“You fucking dumbass! My wife went with her!”

“What the fuck was I supposed to do? Did you see that thing? It was wrapped around my fucking leg while I was on the toilet! It literally scared the shit out of me. And then when I tried hobbling away, the fucking thing continued to wrap itself around me. A fucking snake, Edu!”

“Yeah, I get it. It was fucking terrifying, but dude, your wife just left you. Did you not hear that part?”

“She didn’t leave me,” I scoffed. “She’s leaving for a while to cool off, but she’ll be back.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Of course I am.”

“Kavanaugh,” Edu snapped. “She walked out. She basically said if you wanted space, she’d give you all the space you wanted. She said she was taking the fucking cats!”

“Yes!” I jabbed a finger at him. “Yet, the cats are still here!”

“Because you can’t make a dramatic exit while carrying cats and coming back for litter boxes and food!” he shouted.

Alright, he might have a point there, but I was choosing to believe that he was wrong on this one. I was just mad and blowing off steam. I had a fucking snake wrapped around me, for Christ’s sake!

“Look, it doesn’t matter. She’ll cool off and then she’ll come back. It’s not like she has anywhere else to go.”

“Right, because you’re providing for her. Oh, wait. That’s right. She said she’s wealthy all on her own.”

I frowned. “Yeah, she did say that, didn’t she?”

“She did.”

“I wonder where she got all that money?”

“You might know if you ever bothered to talk to her.”

“I do,” I snapped. “We talk and…discuss things.”

“Like what?”

That was a good fucking question. One that I didn’t really have the answer to right now. “Cats and…her lack of cooking abilities,” I said slowly.

“Wow. So, you don’t even know the basics.”

“Look, I know what she likes in bed, and that’s over seventy percent of a marriage!”

He tossed his head back and chuckled. “Man, you really don’t know anything about marriage, do you?”

“Like you do? Your wife literally used Rae to hide herself from you.”

“Before we were married,” he argued. “And I was smart enough to figure out that I was the problem.”

“Oh, so now I’m the problem?”

“Well, yeah. You did choose your wife based on your compatibility on a dating website.”

“Hey, that was specially generated by Dash!” I snapped.

“Well, that specially generated match just walked out the door and left you holding your dick. If you don’t get your shit together, you’re gonna lose her.”

“She wasn’t the match!” I shouted, not even sure why I was yelling about this.

“And clearly, she’s the best thing that ever happened to you,” he retorted .

“I know that!”

“Then why the fuck are you letting her walk out the door? You’d better get your shit together or she won’t come back.”

I couldn’t believe this. My own teammate was turning on me. “Why the fuck is this my fault? She’s the one who brought a fucking boa constrictor into the house and didn’t tell me!”

“And for that, you yell at her for not talking to you. What you do not do is lay all your shit at her feet.”

“I didn’t.”

“You did, and you fucking know it.” He stomped toward the door.

“Where are you going?”

“To find my woman. Maybe you don’t mind having your woman run off, but I fucking do!”

I flinched at the slam of the door and slumped on the stool at the counter. Tigger jumped up and brushed his body against my hand, begging for pets like always.

“Don’t worry. She’s not going to take you. I won’t let her.”

I rolled my eyes as I sat talking to a fucking cat. I had problems, starting with the fact that no matter what I did, I ruined everything between Daphne and me, even when she was at fault. I really had to work on that.

Snatching my keys off the counter, I headed for the door and got in my truck. There was only one hotel in the area, and if I had to guess, that’s where she went.

It didn’t take long to find her. There were only two vehicles in the parking lot, and one of them was Harper’s. The other was Edu’s, and I could see him arguing with her from the road. Pulling in beside them, I parked and got out, marching to the open hotel room door.

Daphne stood as soon as she saw me, scowling the moment I walked through the door. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

I slammed the door and marched over to her, grabbing her around the waist and hauling her against me. “I’m a fucking ass.”

My lips crashed down on hers in a brutal kiss. She tried to push me away, but I wouldn’t allow it, holding her to me so she couldn’t escape. After a few seconds, she stopped fighting and started tearing at my clothes, which I gladly allowed.

“I’m sorry I keep fucking up.”

“I’m sorry I brought a snake into the house.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I mumbled against her lips.

“Does that mean we can keep him?”

“Not a chance in hell,” I said as I tore her shirt over her head.

My lips latched onto her neck and I sucked hard, leaving a hickey that I knew would be visible for days. “What about the cats?” she panted.

“Don’t you dare try to take Tigger from me.” I bent down and tore her pants off, pushing her back on the bed. Crawling between her thighs, I was just about to bury my face in her pussy when I heard a hissing sound and stopped in my tracks.

“Daphne…”

“Yeah?” There was an audible wince in her voice.

“Is the snake in the room?”

“If I say yes, are you going to stop what you’re doing?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely.”

“Then no. There’s not a snake in the room.”

I had a decision to make. I could back away from her very sexy, very wet pussy in favor of finding the snake, or I could pretend she was telling the truth and end up in heaven.

“Fuck it.”

I laid panting on the bed with Daphne in my arms and a snake slithering somewhere around the room. If I was smart, I’d get the hell out of there, but I was still too boneless to move.

“That was…”

“Amazing,” I finished for her. Rolling to my side, I grinned at her. “So, now we can say we know what it’s like to do it with a snake in the room.”

“And we wouldn’t be talking about yours,” she laughed .

This woman was too funny. How the hell had I gotten lucky enough to find a woman like her? “You’re fucking beautiful, you know that?”

A blush stained her cheeks as her eyes met mine. “Tell me about her.”

Nothing killed a mood like your wife asking you to tell her about a past relationship. Normally, that was something that would happen before a person got married, so I couldn’t exactly blame her.

“Why?”

“Because I want to know what it was about her that…” She dropped her eyes and I sighed, rolling to my back.

“You’ve heard people talking.”

“Actually, I asked Harper about her. I ran into Isla at the wedding and then again at the hospital.”

“Sorry about that,” I grunted, feeling like shit that she wasn’t better prepared for the storm that was Isla.

“She’s very protective of you.”

“She shouldn’t be,” I snapped, anger fueling me, but it wasn’t because I had feelings for Isla still. I fucking hated what Daphne was implying. That Isla would approach her and say anything.

Daphne rolled to face me, propping her head on her hand. “So, tell me about it.”

The way she said it, it was more curiosity in her tone than jealousy or anger. But that didn’t really surprise me. Daphne didn’t strike me as the type to react in that way.

“She’s an old friend from when I was a kid. After she separated from her husband, she moved out here to be close to me.”

“Had you been in contact over the years?”

I shook my head, turning to her. “I know what you’re thinking. Total stalker, but it really wasn’t like that.”

“Hey, I came out here to marry a man who didn’t even know I existed. I have no room to judge.”

That’s what I loved about her. “Things were in a shit place from the start.

There was stuff happening at OPS with my old boss and— I had to go back to work with my old man.

We never really got along, but I did it for Cash.

I was hoping to gain some intel that would help him.

And along the way, I kept finding myself in these shit circumstances, mostly of my own doing.

“There were things I should have told Isla, but I didn’t because I thought it would be better for her, or I thought I was protecting her. And that kind of shit just kept happening. I was on a runaway train and I refused to pull the emergency brake.”

“That’s some metaphor.”

I scrubbed a hand over my face, sighing heavily. “Well, that’s what it felt like.” I rolled my head to face her, staring into her kind eyes. “Have you ever done something that you knew was the wrong choice, but you just kept going down that road?”

“Once or twice,” she grinned. “Stealing cats and then running away to marry you didn’t seem like the wisest decision of my life. But so far, it’s turned out okay.”

I brushed my thumb along her lip, so fucking grateful to have her in my life. Of all the shit I had done over the years, and all the baggage I carried, she made everything so much lighter—and so much more stressful at the same time. But I wouldn’t change a fucking thing.

“Well, I can’t say the same for my time with Isla. I think I was just wrapped up in the idea of her, but it was wrong from the start. We jumped in headfirst and never really got to know each other again.”

“Much like we did,” she whispered.

“I guess, but I was out of town a lot when I was with her. I was constantly hiding things from her.” I narrowed my eyes at her. “And it wasn’t cats.”

She chuckled, intertwining her hand with mine and squeezing it for reassurance. “So, how did it end?”

“With me basically pushing her into another man’s arms. I can’t say I blame her.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I wasn’t happy about it, but I knew it was my own fault.”

“And you just moved on,” she said disbelievingly.