21
M ortified didn’t even come close to this. Rose sank into the couch. She’d lost her freaking mind and had a complete meltdown over a freaking alarm.
An alarm.
What the hell was I thinking?
They’ll all think I’m insane.
She huddled on the sofa, her hands covering her face. Caleb was doing something in the kitchen. She could hear drawers and stuff opening and closing. But she wasn’t sure if she wanted to look and see what he was doing.
“Hey.”
She jerked away from his voice and lowered her hands. He squatted directly in front of her with a wary look on his face. “I didn’t hear you coming.”
“Don’t worry, like I said, I tend to move kinda quietly at the best of times.” He pushed something cold into her hand.
Her hands gripped the bowl. “Umm…”
“Women need ice cream in times of crisis, right?” he asked sheepishly. “I’ll admit, I’m out of my depth here. If you want me to fix a crisis in war, then I’m your guy. I’m not really up to date on how to fix things when they go wrong for the woman in your life.”
He was so adorably flustered as he admitted that, and she blinked at him as he placed a spoon on the lid of the ice cream tub in her hands. “It’s eight in the morning. Um…”
He looked uncertain and totally out of his comfort zone as he’d told her he was. “I Googled, and Dr. Google says provide females with ice cream or wine in times of distress. I figured with the morning you’ve had, you deserve one or the other. I don’t have wine here, and I’ve never seen you drink… which makes this a job for ice cream.”
Wow.
“Thank you.” She wasn’t entirely sure if that was appropriate here, but his sweetness blindsided her.
He looked it up on Google.
On freaking Google.
That’s so fricking cute.
She’d probably always blush anytime she thought about this mortifying start to the day. But hopefully, the mortification of overreacting like an idiot, losing her mind, freaking out, and everything in between would be tempered with the memory of Caleb Hunt on his knees in front of her, offering ice cream to make it better because Dr. Google told him it was the right thing to do. Heat climbed up the back of her neck, and if she looked in the mirror, she was sure her face was flame-red. She tucked her chin down, lowering her gaze. He must think she was a complete and utter wuss.
He tipped her chin up, his fingers warm on her skin. “Don’t hide. You did nothing wrong. I promise. You reacted like anyone who has never been in this life would have.” He pressed a kiss to her temple. “Do you want to change into your own clothes? And I’ll grab blankets, and we can chill on the couch for a while. If we run out of ice cream, I’ll have Kace bring us more.”
“Yeah, that sounds awesome.” She might feel better if she was wearing her own clothes. She’d left her bags in the spare room when Kacey had brought them to her yesterday.
Someone else went through your stuff.
She pushed the errant thought out of her head as she shut the door behind her. She unzipped her case and fished inside for her favorite yoga pants and her Kris Michaels slogan hoodie. It had been a crappy morning, and she needed every bit of comfort she could get. After adding a pair of fluffy socks, she padded back into the living room to find Caleb waiting for her.
“Hey.”
Her eyes widened as she caught a glimpse of the couch. “You went all out.” Fluffy blanket, check. Ice cream, check. He’d even produced a bunch of paperback books. A plate of cookies and candy… so much candy. “Have you been asking Dr. Google again?”
“Does it show?”
She nodded and climbed under the blanket. “Just a little.” She scanned the titles on the books as he sat on the other end of the couch and pulled her feet onto his lap.
“It’s mostly thrillers, but I have some other options coming.”
Did he order stuff from Amazon?
“You don’t have to buy me stuff.”
“I didn’t.” He shook his head and stood up when the doorbell sounded. “That’s your books now.”
Books don’t freaking knock on the door.
Confused, she watched him padding across the room. While she’d been changing into her comfy clothes, he’d swapped out Rexar’s shorts for a pair of faded blue jeans and a t-shirt that showcased his massive shoulders.
“Thanks for coming.”
Rose wasn’t sure what to think when Caleb stepped aside to allow the women into his house. They came loaded down with bags, baby gear, and a baby.
“We brought wine,” Lily chirped. She turned and glared at Caleb. “And if you say it’s too early in the morning for wine, then tough luck. Your girl is having a bad day, and we’re going to help you fix it.”
“Damn, Google was correct for once.”
Lina and another of the women started moving armchairs, bringing them closer to the couch. Rose winced when one of them produced a staple gun, but it made sense when another produced a blanket, which they stapled to the back of the chair.
“That’s my chair, Eedana,” Caleb growled. “What the hel—” he glanced at the baby, “—heck are you doing?”
“What does it look like we’re doing? We’re making a blanket fort for girl time.” Eedana made a shooing motion in Caleb’s direction. “Now go get me a couple of brooms or something so I can prop this up in the middle.”
“But my chairs. You get to fix any freaking holes when you are done.”
Rose noticed that despite his grumbling, Caleb left the room and reappeared a moment later with a broom and a mop.
“I don’t have two brooms, so a mop will have to do.” He handed them to the girls. “Are you serious about the wine?”
“Damn straight we are,” Lina replied. “It doesn’t matter that it’s ten am. Wine is needed when it comes to discussing the shit show that was this morning.” She made a shooing motion toward the door. “Now shoo. Leave us to look after your girl. Nem wants you in the war-room, stat. There’s a disciplinary meeting you need to attend.”
Rose froze. “You got in trouble for me acting like a fool this morning?”
“It’s not for me. I promise.” He shook his head. “We need to figure out if the new guy was sent by the organization or someone else.”
“The organization?” Was it not Janek who was behind the alarms and problems earlier? She got to her feet and followed him to the coat rack inside the door. “Caleb?”
“The organization is a bunch of assholes we’ve been dealing with for a while.” He strapped on his holster and shoved a handgun into it before shrugging into a hoodie. “Do you want me to stay? I can call Nemesis; he’ll understand.”
She shook her head. She’d caused enough problems for him. “No, it’s okay.” She still wasn’t entirely sure what she felt about the invasion of the wives and partners of the men. But she figured she’d figure it out as she went. She peered up at him and read the uncertainty in his gaze. She wasn’t exactly giving off ‘I got this’ vibes. “I’ll have someone call you if that changes.”
He sighed as if it came from the depths of his soul. When he reached for her, she went easily into his arms. Rose laid her cheek against his chest and soaked in the comfort being in his arms offered. After a moment, he pressed a kiss on the top of her head and released her.
“I won’t be long.”
She caught the door when he opened it. “I’ll be fine. It’s wine, ice cream, and books,” she reassured him. “Those are some of my favorite things.”
“Okay, let me fix the lock so you can get in and out of here.” He took her hand, placed it on the scanner, and pushed some buttons. When the light flashed green, he nodded. “Now, you can open the door if you need to.”
“Thank you.” She felt so much better knowing she wasn’t trapped in the house anymore.
He gave her one of his trademark sexy winks and left. Determined not to make an idiot out of herself more than she already had in front of these women, she started to go back to the living room when a knock at the door stopped her. She placed her hand on the scanner, and when it flashed green, she opened the door.
“Hi.” Becky practically bounced past her into the house. “I brought the fairy lights, Chica.” She held up a sting of battery-powered lights. “Every blanket fort needs pretty lights.”
Rose’s eyes widened as Becky swept into the living room like a hurricane. Before Rose got there, the fairy lights were being pinned to the edges of the blanket fort with clothes pins someone had produced.
Becky crawled under the blankets, sat cross-legged on the floor with her back against the couch, and emptied her tote. “I’ve got Riley, Olivia, Kris, Susan, Caitlyn, Abbie, Maryann, Elizabella, Saffron…” For every author she named, she produced a book. “Each one a first in series. Your Caleb said you love to read; tell us what you need, sister.” She fanned the books out on the floor in front of her like a drug dealer with a new stash of heroin. “This is your ‘fix what’s wrong with the world,’ tent. You get to pick first.”
Was this what she’d been missing out on by not having female friends in her life? She didn’t know. But if it was, she’d definitely been missing out. “I’ll have Nightstalker, please.” She took the book, her eyes widening when she turned it over to the front cover. “How did you get the OG cover with the heroine on the front? I've been searching for years to find it. Years, I tell you.”
“I'm an OG Rebel, Girlfriend. I have every cover ever printed." Becky stroked her fingers over the covers of the books in front of her. “You couldn't pry this out of my cold, dead hands, not even if Tuck's life was on the line. But I’ll lend it to a fellow Rebel.”
“And you’ll watch to make sure I don’t dog ear it.”
“If you do,” Becky muttered, “you and me will have problems. Big, big problems.”
She nodded in agreement. “I promise I’ll look after it like it was my own.” A comfort read that she could almost recite in her sleep was just what she needed. “Let me check the freezer to see if Caleb has more ice cream.”
“Lina’s putting Jamie down for his nap,” Eedana said. “She can grab it. Your only job is to get swept away by the words and to get lost in a story where good men who sometimes have to do bad things figure out which way the sun shines when they figure out love always wins between the pages of a Riley Edwards classic.”
If only it worked that way in real life.
“He’s sleeping.” Lina placed a couple of tubs of ice cream on the floor in the center of their circle. “I swear if some jerk sets off the alarms and wakes him again, I’m going to cry at Dalton and insist he shoots whoever is responsible.”
That sounds a bit harsh.
“Jamie’s teething. We’re lucky if he sleeps a couple of hours at a time before either Dalton or I have to find the teething gel or contemplate running away from home to avoid the screams because it makes us nuts that we can’t take the pain for him.”
Rose inwardly groaned. She hadn’t meant for her face to supply the subtitles to what she was thinking. “Sorry, I didn’t mean?—”
“Girlfriend, I’m one of the least maternal people I know.” Lina jabbed a spoon into one of the ice cream tubs. “Even the week before I had Jamie, I’d have had that exact same look on my face. Now I’m wondering how I can teach myself to take good enough photos to use for a damn Christmas card.” All the women erupted in laughter as if Lina’s grousing was the funniest thing on the planet.
“When I get my camera back,” she’d started offering before she thought about it, “then I can take photos for you to use for your card.”
“I’m not really the Christmas card type.” Lina snorted. “But I would love some to send to Dalton’s mom. She’d lose her mind.”
“When I get my camera back, we’ll do some,” Rose promised.
“Hell, girl, I’ll have the business order one if you’d like to have one before the guys are done doing their thing with yours.” Lina searched through the books. “Love me some Callaghan Brothers. Thank you, Abbie Zanders.”
“I can’t let you do that.”
“It will belong to us.” Lina waved her off as if she knew what she was thinking. “But you can use it while you are here. You’ll have to tell me what to buy before I order it, though.”
Who were these people, and why were they being so dang nice to her? They didn’t know her from Adam, yet they were bending over backward not only to help her but to make her feel as comfortable as possible while they did it. “You’d do that for me?”
“It’s no big deal,” Becky jumped in. “She can sign it off as a business expense.”
“But won’t your husband be mad?”
They all laughed, but it was Lina who answered. “Umm, no. Not a chance in hell. He says I don’t spend enough money as it is. Dalton will be thrilled I’m buying anything that isn’t a weapon.” She smirked. “He also dragged a promise out of me that I’d try and be better about buying stuff for me. Consider this helping a girl out.”
Rose hesitated. As much as she’d love to tell her yes, she’d only promised Caleb that she’d stay a couple of days. She stuffed a spoonful of Rocky Road into her mouth to give herself a couple of seconds to figure out how to answer without sounding ungrateful. “I?—”
Becky, damn her, knew exactly which buttons to push. “If you don’t say yes, then Lina will order one off Amazon, and her in-laws will cry for the wrong reasons when they get those photos.”
She wanted so badly to agree. She almost said yes, but two more spoons of ice cream kept her from doing it while she tried to figure out if she dared take a couple of more days before she left. The others left her to her thoughts and peered over Becky and Lina’s phones as they looked at cameras on Amazon.
“If you’re doing some shots for Lina, will you do some for us too?” Lily asked. “RJ is growing up so fast. He’ll be taller than me soon. Someday, I’ll tell you mine and Rexar’s story, but I have no special photos of him and RJ. Please, will you do it?”
In this day and age, with all the cameras on phones and the internet, these mommas wanting to have special photos of their kids and their families called to something in her soul. “Okay, I’ll do it.”
The next thing she knew, she was showing them options on a website. She had no business visiting, but Lina picked one and then bought it. She even paid for overnight shipping. “Operation Spec Ops Kiddo Photoshoot is a go.”
“Yay.”
“Yippee.”
“Wonderful.”
“Shh, don’t wake the baby until we at least get some book time.” Lina put her phone down and picked up her book.
Rose took the wine glass that Adalyn handed her and sipped. She hoped to God that she’d done the right thing. “Caleb won’t mind me staying a few more days, right?”
“Nope, from the way he came into my house earlier,” Lily reassured her, “he’ll be thrilled.”
Hearing someone else say it made her feel better. “I hope so.”