Page 17 of Covert Affections (Shadow Agents/PSI-Ops #5)

Chapter Fifteen

Lindy

Thirteen years later…

“Teresa, you can’t call me to check in and casually drop that you’re phoning from some random guy’s satellite phone from the middle of the ocean,” Lindy said as she walked onto the porch of her house, carrying three bags with one hand.

Two of the bags had groceries in them, while the third had men’s gray sweatpants that Lindy had found on sale. She’d basically cleaned the store out, buying a stockpile for herself as well as for her best friend. It wasn’t as if her or her bestie had men in their lives to give them to.

No.

This was Lindy’s version of manifesting.

May hot dudes start raining from the sky.

Ones I have no chance of hurting.

Oh, and they should be super hot and hung like a horse.

Lindy had fallen down a rabbit hole of hot guys in gray sweatpants on social media when she’d been looking for new spicy romantasy book recommendations.

The algorithm had started showing her muscle-bound hunks in gray sweatpants and she’d been hooked.

Prior to that, she hadn’t even realized sweatpants kinks were a thing.

She added it to her ever-growing list of kinks that included but was not limited to, men in masks, men on motorcycles, and men reading books.

Soon, it would be easier to list the things that didn’t turn her on. Of course, that probably had something to do with how long it had been since she’d last had sex.

Too long.

“Hey, I’d have called from my cell phone, but it doesn’t get reception way out here,” said Teresa, pulling Lindy from her thoughts of sweatpants and dry spells.

“I cannot believe you’re on a boat in the middle of nowhere with a man you don’t even know,” chastised Lindy.

“I gotta say, I ain’t a huge fan of this satellite thingie,” returned Teresa, as if that would somehow lessen Lindy’s concern.

“I only just figured out how to work my own phone. Smart my ass. I prefer my old one. May have been dumb as all get out, but it got a better signal, didn’t drop my calls all the time and I only had to charge it once a week rather than three times a day. ”

Lindy did her best to avoid laughing. Teresa wasn’t big on technology.

It had taken what felt like an act of Congress to get Teresa to move from her old flip phone to a smartphone.

And Teresa took every opportunity she got to remind Lindy just how much she hated the new transition.

“I’d prefer you didn’t get on boats with men you barely know. ”

“Yeah, well, we all want for something,” said Teresa, sounding as if she might be lighting up a cigarette.

The creaky floorboards on the porch sagged slightly as Lindy walked over them, a constant reminder that they needed to be replaced.

She had a running list of things she needed to do to the house in her head, and proper window treatments jumped to the top—right after fixing her locks.

And if she ever hit the lotto, she also planned to renovate the detached garage.

It was full of things she and her aunt had inherited when they’d bought the home years ago.

The previous owner had been quite the handyman in his day, which had been a long time before they’d bought the house from him since he’d been in his late nineties when they’d gotten it.

The house had needed work even then, but it had been all Lindy and her aunt could afford at the time, and the elderly man had seemed pleased to sell to a nurse and her teenage niece.

The garage had been his workshop and was filled with workbenches and old-school tools—the kind that didn’t plug in but got the job done with sweat equity.

Most were rusted, and Lindy didn’t know what the majority of them were used for.

One entire wall was filled with nothing but screws, nuts, bolts, and other small items like that.

Old doors were on their sides out there, blocking her way to the other half of the garage.

Lindy thought she might have seen some old windowpanes and sheets of glass stored in the rafter area but had yet to investigate further.

Not that she’d even know what to do with any of it.

She was about as good with a tool as she was with animals.

Since there was a goldfish incident from her university days that she had yet to live down, that wasn’t saying much.

She planned to watch some videos on home repair at some point but hadn’t gotten around to it.

Selling the house was the best option, not that she’d get much for it, but the idea of parting with something she and her aunt had spent so long fighting to keep when they barely had two pennies to their name seemed wrong.

Lindy wanted to make it work, and someday, the house would be everything she’d ever hoped the house could be—a real home.

Sure, the neighboring lots were even more rundown than her own, but that didn’t matter.

The front porch light was burned out, adding to her already massive list of things that needed to be handled.

Lindy sighed and unlocked the front door.

She had to give the door a kick with her foot to get it to open, but she’d been doing as much all her life since it was the same home she’d lived in with her aunt while growing up.

Once inside, Lindy put her keys and purse on the side table and locked the door behind her, shuffling her phone into her other hand.

She was used to getting in late since she’d taken over running the bar, but tonight was later than normal since most of her staff was out sick—well, one was simply out—no explanation given.

“You worry too much,” Teresa’s voice filled the silence.

It was normal for Teresa to phone around closing time at the bar.

The woman liked to pretend it was to check in on the bar, but Lindy knew better, especially since Teresa rarely ever asked about the establishment.

When she’d made Lindy the co-owner of The Hell Tap , without asking, she’d handed over the keys and basically washed her hands of the place before hightailing it to the Florida Keys.

Lindy could hardly blame the woman. Retirement looked pretty darn good with how things had been going at The Hell Tap lately, but at twenty-nine, almost thirty, Lindy wasn’t anywhere close to retirement age.

She couldn’t even take a day off. She was too short-handed at the bar.

The staff was passing around some weird stomach bug, and Irwin, the cook Lindy had hired shortly after Teresa had decided to retire, hadn’t shown up for work in days.

Since Irwin had a bizarre fascination with fishing, Lindy strongly suspected he was standing in a river somewhere, fly fishing, taking selfies with his catches rather than showing up for work. At least, that was the hope. The alternative was that something terrible had happened to him.

She didn’t want to think like that.

The wall near the stove at the bar was full of photos from his various catches. She didn’t mind if he felt he needed a break, but she wasn’t happy he’d left her high and dry with no one to cover the kitchen. It had left Lindy having yet another extra-long night.

Lindy didn’t complain though. She loved what she did.

Taking on the task of co-owning Teresa’s bar had seemed like a dream come true.

After all, Lindy had been working there in some form or fashion since Teresa had swept in wearing leopard print and saved her from the clutches of Cigarette-Man—the creepy asshat who still managed to give Lindy nightmares even all these years later.

Teresa had stayed true to her word and explained everything she knew about the world of the supernatural.

She’d opened Lindy’s eyes to the seedy underworld that existed right under the nose of humans.

She’d helped Lindy understand what she was—a succubus who had traits from other types of supernaturals as well, but all of which paled compared to her sex lust side.

Teresa had even gone as far as to give Lindy an after-school, steady job as a bus girl who cleared tables and washed dishes.

It hadn’t been glamorous, but it paid better than anything she’d worked at back then.

From there, Lindy had moved to waiting tables, then bartending and finally, doing the books for Teresa for years.

She knew that bar inside and out. In a lot of ways, the place felt like an extension of herself. Like a second home.

Teresa had been good about letting Lindy bring her books and study in the bar when it was slow.

When anyone was dumb enough to question Teresa about Lindy’s age and the fact she was working in the bar, they ran the very high risk of having to sign Teresa’s bat.

There really was no limit to what Teresa would do in order to protect her.

The woman had even arranged for Lindy to take self-defense courses.

They’d started out at the sheriff’s department, in a group setting, twice a month, before turning into three times a week and private.

The private tutors varied, but all were hotties.

Lindy knew that had been Teresa’s doing as well.

She’d understood Lindy’s needs as a succubus and made sure to put trustworthy males in her path.

Teresa would never admit it because it would go against the tough-as-nails persona she’d created for herself, but she was a softy. The woman’s heart managed to be bigger than her temper, and her mouth, which was saying something.

Lindy couldn’t prove it, but highly suspected Teresa was responsible for getting Lindy’s aunt into a drug trial program that eventually helped put her on the road to remission with her mysterious illness and cut the medical expenses tremendously.

Then there was the anonymous donor who had come out of seemingly nowhere and who had handled the outstanding medical bills that had been mounting.

Teresa had helped Lindy talk with her aunt about accepting help from local programs that were in place to assist those in need.

That also meant home health care professionals became staples in Lindy’s life, giving her aunt the care she required while freeing Lindy up to focus on school and work more hours at the bar.

It hadn’t left much room for spare time or socializing with friends. Since the only friends Lindy had back then had been Teresa and some bar regulars, she’d not felt as if she were missing out on much. The best part of it all was that it helped Lindy focus on getting into college.

She’d gotten into a great university, and when she’d shown up to meet her roommate during her freshman year, she’d walked in to find a girl who seemed very, very familiar.

The second she’d realized her roommate was the same girl she’d befriended right before kindergarten started, Lindy had known it was fate.

That the stars had aligned and brought her and Charley back together again.

They’d never lost touch again, despite going down very different paths in their adult lives and were living a few miles from each other now that Charley had taken over her father’s horse ranch and turned it into a rescue.

Charley was a veterinarian who specialized in horses and other large-breed animals.

Lindy was basically a Jill of all trades, but that was fine.

She didn’t like being tied to any one thing, or at least she hadn’t until Teresa had talked her into taking over the bar.

Running the place had never been on Lindy’s bucket list, and she’d resisted to start, but Teresa wasn’t exactly the type of woman who took no for an answer.

That was how Lindy found herself here, the partial owner of Teresa’s bar, which was now turning a decent profit.

The bar had a past. One that wasn't always pretty, but it was still standing.

That's part of why Lindy liked it so much.

She, too, had a past, and it wasn't pretty either. It wasn’t something she wanted to dwell on, so she pushed her focus back to the here and now.

“Tell me more about this guy you’re alone with, out in the middle of the ocean,” said Lindy, still struggling to believe Teresa would do something so reckless.

“Boat Guy?” asked Teresa, her voice carrying a faint note of mischief. “Not much to tell—yet.”

Lindy paused mid-step, her expression caught between disbelief and resignation. “Do you even know the man’s name? You’ve called him Boat Guy three times in this conversation so far, and we started talking before I left the bar and talked my entire drive home.”