Page 32 of Guarding Grace

“He said a delivery went wrong.”

“It figures he wouldn’t know better than to work with those whack jobs.” He huffed. “What kind of delivery? Drugs?”

I sighed. “He didn’t say.”

“What else?”

“That’s all he told me before the goon squad arrived.” I shivered, remembering those few minutes.

“If that’s it, why meet with you?”

“He wanted the key to my warehouse space.”

“And you gave it to him?” he asked incredulously.

I looked out the window. “I had to. He needed my help.” Was I enabling more bad choices?

“Kitten, I’m not judging. Where is this warehouse?”

Kittenmade me smile. I gave him the address. “Elliot said he needed to lie low.”

Terry considered things silently as we took the next corner. “Okay. We’ll look into it. Hopefully that’s where he went.”

“Thank you.” I rested my hand on his shoulder. “I mean that.”

He nodded. “I promise I’ll do what I can to help him. For you, not for him.”

As we drove on, I replayed what had happened in my apartment between me and this honorable man I’d always referred to as Tyrant.

Oh my God.I’d kissed Terry Goodwin, the one-time bane of my existence, and it had been breath-stealing. He’d blown my mind by admitting to wanting me. Instead of our day at Disneyland being an aberration, it had revealed the truth of how things could be for us—playful banter hiding attraction. His crude meanness was the inconsistency, the falsehood. And all for some stupid sense of obligation to my brother who’d died years ago.

I loved Pete and missed him terribly, but he wasn’t here and shouldn’t be a factor anymore. Like I told Terry, I was my own woman and could make up my own mind.

The first time Pete had gone on a deployment, it had been a hard talk. He’d sat me down to discuss the possibility that he wouldn’t make it back.

I’d cried a gallon of tears that day.

He’d insisted that if the worst happened, I should go on and live my life, relying on his best friend, Terry, and a few others. He’d made me promise to stop mourning him after a month if he didn’t come back.

It had to have been the toughest thing a teenager had ever agreed to.

But Pete did return from that deployment, and several others.

Then, four years ago had come the awful news that he’d been captured overseas by the worst people on the planet. That information had allowed me to both worry and hope. Then, a month later, I’d opened my door on a Saturday morning to the sight of an officer in dress blues and two others. It was the visit I’d dreaded.

Pete had been declared KIA based on claims by the terrorists and a video that I thankfully didn’t watch.

I closed my eyes, recalling how I’d cried and cried, trying to adhere to Pete’s one-month limit. I failed, but eventually I’d pulled up my big-girl panties and gotten on with life. I’d finished college and after that started SpaceMasters with the money from Pete’s life insurance.

Terry had been the trustee of the money, and while I’d been in school he hadn’t let me spend it on anything not school related. I’d always resented the way he used it to control me.

A smile overtook me as I remembered the day I’d landed my first customer for a business I wouldn’t have been able to get off the ground without the money Terry had forced me to save. I’d wanted to spend it on the car I’d coveted—a sweet little blue BMW that I’d thought would heal the hurt I felt from Pete’s loss. Instead, the Terry I’d considered so mean at the time had forced the correct long-term decision on me.

“We’re here,” Terry announced. “Safe and sound as promised.”

I opened my eyes as we pulled into a space in the building’s underground parking.

Terry took my hand as we rushed to the elevator.