Page 10 of Danger Close (Mourningkill #3)

I Had Some Time

Cobra

“Daddy!” Daria Savchenko greeted, her phone smashed to her ear as she paced up and down the porch of the McClanahan’s farmhouse.

“How are you doing, Daria?” I called over the roof of my parked Audi. “Isn’t it too cold to be outside right now?”

“My Ukrainian blood is impervious to cold.” She winked at me, her smile dazzling. Or, at least, it would be if she wasn’t my kid’s age. “I am still waiting for you to tell me about the squid!”

Christ, that story was going to follow me around forever.

“Maybe another day,” I chuckled, looking back to see Teresa slowly uncurling out of the low-riding car.

“You promise, Daddy?” Daria waggled her brows, and I felt my ears heat with embarrassment. Her gaze followed mine, towards the car, and she added, “Who is this? I don’t remember sending you a plus one!” She jutted out her bottom lip in a flirtatious pout. “I was supposed to be your date.”

Teri closed the door with a small slam, her face expressionless, a sign that she was pissed .

“Don’t be a menace, Daria,” I chided, “or I’ll start playing matchmaker between you and that little fireman.”

“Oh, Daddy,” she said as if that tickled her lust. “Would you?”

I made a mental note to do just that, and apologized to the fireman because he was going to be in for the wildest ride of his life. Daria was going to eat him up alive.

“This is Teresa Louise Guerro,” I extended my arm out to Teri, who hesitated at the bottom of the porch steps. “The Mother of the Bride.”

Daria lifted one perfectly plucked brow, her eyes full of scorn. I shivered at how harsh her expression was. I should have expected it, since Trinity had a contentious relationship with her, and Daria was protective of her loved ones. But I didn’t like this.

I wanted to jump in front of Teresa and shield her from Daria’s judgment.

“Oh.” Daria looked Teri up and down. “That’s… unexpected.”

I kept my palm out, feeling Teresa’s hesitance, and wanting to offer her a touch that might help ground her. But she ignored my offered hand, pulling my leather jacket tighter around her as she said nothing.

“Teresa—” I waved for her to come up the stairs. “This is Daria Savchenko. I’m almost sure she’s the Maid of Honor. Maybe.”

The young woman tapped her hip against mine, then gave me a flirtatious wink. “Now, now, Daddy . I’m also the Best Man.”

The word “Daddy” was dripping with so much innuendo it made me squirm. Which was her intent. The damn hoyden.

“I have to go to Albany to get more tulle for the barn,” Daria said, bouncing down the steps towards her scarlet red sports car.

“Really?” I lifted a brow. “I saw the truck load you brought in yesterday. You have enough tulle to make tutus for an Army.”

“It’s still not enough!” she yelled back. “The barn needs to be magical !”

Her open palms made an arc over her head like a rainbow.

I wasn’t even sure how to respond to that. “Kiddo, you care more about the aesthetics of this wedding than the bride or groom.”

She shrugged, completely unashamed. “I have Griff’s black card. I’m going to do some damage to that little rich boy.”

She opened her car door and folded into it before giving me a little finger wave, zooming out of the drive, leaving nothing but smoke in her wake.

“Your girlfriend?” Teresa said through clenched teeth.

“Shut the hell up, Princess,” I grumbled, putting one hand on the door knob. I put my other arm around her waist and pulled her into me. “I’m not into girls. ”

She looked shocked, and I almost laughed. Almost. Because having her connected to me like that, her breasts against my chest, her lips close to mine made lust shoot through my body. My cock woke up, once again, trying to say hi.

“I’m into women .” My voice was heavy with lust.

Her upturned, almond-shaped eyes widened as my unbridled desire for her seeped through my heavy-lidded gaze. Her surprise was clear, but so was the reciprocated need visible in her stunning, cerulean eyes.

“Oh,” she gasped.

“Yeah.” A smirk tugged the edge of my lip. “ Oh. ”

I pushed the door open, keeping a hold of Teri’s waist as I led her through the foyer into the belly of the old Victorian house that was full of DIY projects in various stages of completion.

One wall was half-painted. Another was knocked out. A toolbox was open on the ground, and a dog on the couch lifted his head, barked twice, called it good, and went back to sleep.

“How are you doing, Beau?” I said to the sleepy dog who snorted in response.

The air was heavy with the scent of tomato sauce and the sound of happy chatter.

“Cobra!” First Sergeant Mack McClanahan greeted me from the dining room, sitting at the head of the table with a beer bottle in his hand. “Dinner will be ready at seven. Drink?”

He scratched his red beard, which was sprinkled with white hair, not unlike my own.

Mack peered down at the woman under my arm and lifted a brow, waiting for an introduction and explanation. I was about to offer one when the conversation from the nearby dining nook drifted to us.

“Listen-listen- listen! ” the one with the moustache said, “Get her knocked up, because you do not want to be old, with a cane, trying to run after these kids, and you—” he pointed at the groom, Kai Griffith, “have been shot twice. That leg of yours is gonna be crying while you run after a toddler.”

“Nope,” Taz laughed. “Nope. Nope . Nope !”

She shook her head, her dyed black hair swishing around her shoulders, looking startlingly like her mother’s.

“I’m not opposed,” Griff, the groom, wrapped his arm around my daughter’s waist and pulled her in. “Whenever, wherever, and however many you want, Firefly, just say the word. I’m game.”

The smile he gave her left no doubt as to what game he was into. Gross.

“Alright! That’s enough!” I bellowed. Taz practically jumped out of Griff’s arms. “I’m not ready to be a grandpa quite yet.”

I didn’t need to think about my daughter and her husband making babies. It was the agreement parents had with their kids. I know where babies come from, but I was in absolute and complete denial about where grandbabies came from.

The conversation halted, as all eyes turned to me and the woman under my arm.

Griff took the first step, leaning forward to offer me a handshake. “Hey, Cobra.”

“How are you, son?” I let go of Teresa to give my daughter a side hug. “Hi, kiddo.”

“Hey, Cobra,” my kid said, her surprised, and suspicious gaze, on Teri. “Mama.”

Everyone else's brows lifted as they realized who the woman beside me was.

“Trinity,” Teresa said with a half-hearted, awkward smile.

Teresa placed her hands on Taz’s shoulder, and planted a kiss on each cheek.

My daughter shrank into her fiancé, as if he was her lifeline. Or maybe it was the guilt from not having invited her mother?

“You look well,” Teri concluded. “This must be the groom? Non?”

“I’m Kai Griffith. Everyone calls me Griff,” the boy said, not letting go of Trinity when he reached out a hand for a shake. “Pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Guerro.”

“A pleasure,” she said, her eyes assessing him like he was day-old meat in a butcher window.

“I’m Goose!” The moustachioed man who wanted my daughter to get “knocked up” waved his beer bottle. “I had no idea you were French… or Canadian?”

Teri placed a hand on her heart, her brows lifting in feigned shock. Even her voice was completely different.

“Canadian? How dare you!” She clicked her tongue. “I’m from Paris.”

“Ah, the City of Love,” Goose said with a wistful sigh. “Hope to take my kids there some day.”

“Oh? You have children? How old are they?” Teri said, warming up to him considerably, making my hackles rise. Daria was a kid in her late twenties. Goose, on the other hand, was in his forties. Not so young that they couldn’t match up.

Over my dead body.

“Ten and thirteen,” Goose said, his smile bright.

“What dangerous ages for a parent,” Teri said with a smirk. “It’s nothing but difficulties from there.”

“Fact!” Goose said, tapping his beak-like nose.

“Mama!” Trinity hissed out.

“It’s true, ma chérie ,” Teri said, with a flippant laugh. “Your children need you less and less. It’s all heartbreak and disappointment from there.”

“Mama…” Trinity whined.

“I can’t imagine our Trinity disappointing anyone,” Charlotte McClanahan spoke up from the kitchen.

Her sun-streaked brown hair was in a low pony tail, her tawny skin glistened with sweat from the heat of the many pots in front of her, plastering her hair to her brow.

“I’ve been proud of you since the day you showed up on the team. ”

I narrowed my eyes, prickling at the uncharacteristic hostility in Charlotte’s voice. What the hell? Charlotte was a Paradigm spy, like me. We knew each other well, and other than when she was taking someone out, she rarely had a cross word for anyone.

“You must not have your own children,” Teri said, completely unaware of the landmine she’d stepped on until a deafening silence detonated in the middle of the room.

Shit.

“Mama!” Trinity said, her eyes narrowed. “Mamma Mack, she didn’t mean it.”

Without missing a beat, Charlotte turned back to her cooking and said, “I wasn’t blessed with children, no.”

The hurt in her voice was palpable. Again, I wanted to step in front of Teri and absorb the blast. I was about to step forward and apologize on her behalf—on our behalf. But Charlotte beat me to it.

“Some parents have no idea what a poor job they’re doing. Then their children replace them with people who actually deserve their company.”

I have never in my life been hit as hard as Charlotte just hit Teri. I watched my Princess take the hit on the chin, her smile melting away.

Teri looked around at the house, at all the eyes on her, at the closeness that everyone had in this room. Everyone belonged here. Even me, since I’d spent plenty of evenings with my heels kicked up in this old house.

The only outsider was her. Her face didn’t change, but her eyes did. There was a dulling of the sparkle, and I knew she was fortifying herself behind her walls.

“I see,” was all she said, taking the smallest step backwards as her eyes casually roamed the room, a queen standing in a hostile court. “Please excuse me.”

With her head held high, she walked back to the entrance, opening the door and stepping outside. When the front door clicked closed, Trinity quietly whispered, “Mamma Mack…”

“I’m alright, sweetheart,” Charlotte’s voice was watery, wavering as she lifted a hand for everyone to give her space. “I just need to get dinner on the table. Then everything will be fine.”

Mack went to his wife and wrapped his arms around her waist. Her infertility and miscarriages had haunted their early marriage, ripping them apart for years. She’d fought hard to come back home. They’d fought hard for each other.

They’d resolved everything now, but old wounds don’t ever truly heal, do they? They just scar.

“Should someone go after your Mom, Taz?” Goose asked.

“I’ll have a chat with your Mom after she’s had time to cool off.” Teri had done herself no favors in this room. I wanted to apologize to Charlotte on her behalf, but wasn’t sure if it was my place to do so. “She’s not going anywhere.”

I had the car keys, and it was a frigid Upstate New York fall day. Those shoes of hers wouldn’t carry her far. Plus, she hated the cold. Even with my jacket wrapped around her, she’d be freezing.

I had time.

At least I thought so until the roar of an engine, and the moving flash of headlights caught my attention.