Page 22 of Hideaway Whirlwind (Big Boys of Berenson Trucking #4)

Teagan

Fate intervenes when Sydney calls out for me, and Elliott and I hurry to pull on our clothes. I run straight into my daughter in the hallway, and my stomach bottoms out that she should find me coming out of Elliott’s bedroom in the middle of the night.

“I’m hungry,” Sydney says, peering around me through the open door, then straining her neck to look up over my head. “Can I have a snack?”

Elliott grips my upper arms and nudges me out of the way. “I’ll get her something to eat.”

Sydney reaches for his hand when he steps around me, and together they head toward the kitchen.

After cleaning up in the hall bathroom and checking that Kendall and Dustin are still fast asleep, I tiptoe down the hallway and stop at the exit, peeking around the corner.

Elliott cuts a peanut butter and jelly sandwich diagonally before setting it in front of Sydney at the kitchen table.

He takes the seat beside her with his own sandwich, the two of them eating in comfortable silence beneath the dim light switched on over the stove.

“Papa?” Sydney asks around a mouthful of peanut butter when she starts in on her second half, jelly sticking to the corners of her lips.

“Hmm?”

“You’re really nice.” Elliott starts to thank her, but then she says, “Quincy was really, really mean to my mommy.”

Guilt and shame and self-loathing flay me alive that I hadn’t been able to hide the damage Quincy inflicted from my children as well as I thought I had.

“Sydney, sweetie…” Elliott turns in his chair.

She sniffles and her little chin quivers as she drops her sandwich on her plate, her messy bed-head hair falling forward to hide her face.

“Please don’t turn mean. Please.” Tears roll down her cheeks, and Elliott lifts her from her chair, giving her a bear hug, rubbing her back as she cries on his shoulder, my baby’s heart broken.

I don’t know whether or not to interrupt. I don’t even know if I can since my knees buckle, and I slide down the wall to sit on the floor, listening to Elliott—a man who has just confessed to being a convicted murderer—promise not to be mean to her or Dustin or Kendall or me.

He holds and comforts her until she falls asleep once she’s cried all her tears, and he quietly stands. We make eye contact when he passes me in the hallway, and I listen to the bed frame squeak and shift when he lays her down.

Elliott crouches in front of me afterward and swipes away the tears I didn’t know I’d been crying.

He lifts me without a word and carries me into the bedroom next, drawing back both comforters so I can scooch in beside my sweet babies, who deserve so much better than the life I’ve given them.

After tucking us in, instead of leaving us for the night, Elliott sits on the floor with his back against the wooden frame.

He has no idea how much we have in common.

Elliott

My head explodes with static at the first crunch of tires on gravel two evenings later.

No, not yet. Please, not yet . We’ve had two separate flickers of power, leading us to believe the grid was back up and running.

Both times, however, the power went out and stayed out within twenty minutes—just as I’d hoped. But now, someone is here.

Storm raises her head from her food bowl in the kitchen, the fur on her back standing on end as the vehicle approaches, and a low, threatening growl starts up in her chest.

Birdie’s face is stark white as she wipes crumbs from the table after putting Kendall down early for the night after supper. From the couch, sharing a comic book, Dustin and Sydney both look from me to their mama and back again as I approach the front window and peer through the open blinds.

“Who is it?” Birdie asks, flitting to the couch to stand guard in front of the kids.

“Davis,” I say when his vintage cherry red Ford pickup truck bounces into view, hitting the pot hole, surely making him curse up a storm. My breath lodges in my throat. It’s too soon. I’m not ready. I’ll never be ready.

Birdie’s color returns to her cheeks now that she knows it isn’t the police or Priscilla, who she’ll never have to worry about .

“Release,” I say to Storm, wondering if, at one point, she was a guard dog and might know the simple command. Either she does, or she reads the intention in my voice, because she relaxes and lowers her head back to her bowl while her puppies paw at her belly.

“Elliott? The door?” Birdie says, motioning toward it when Davis knocks. I stare at her, letting him knock again. Then longer when he bangs his fist against it until she frowns and rushes in front of me to open it.

A blast of frigid air sweeps into the room, not nearly as chilly as the night before, but enough to have Birdie hugging herself when she steps back to let Davis through.

“Hey, there, Teagan. Glad to see you made it to Texas.” Davis takes off his ball cap covering his light golden brown hair, and he slaps it against his dark blue jeans, then leans in as if to give her a one-armed hug.

He clicks his tongue when Birdie steps out of reach into my chest while I simultaneously lay a claiming hand on her hip. “Well, I’ll be.”

“You’ll be what?” Birdie asks, pulling away from me, though it takes a beat for me to remove my hand.

“Nothing,” he answers with a lopsided grin as he slides his green-eyed gaze to me, then around the room, crinkling his eyes at Sydney and Dustin in a friendly manner. “Can’t wait to tell Old Freddy about this.”

“Who’s Old Freddy?” Birdie asks.

“You’ll see,” Davis replies with a chuckle.

I eye the unwelcome intruder. “What are you doing here?”

“Came to get Teagan and the kiddos now that we’ve got our pipe patched and water running again, though it’ll take some time to repair the drywall.

Found a generator, too.” Davis clicks his tongue again while I imagine beating him six ways to Sunday, then burying him in my woods.

“Have to say it was a mighty big surprise to hear from Russell that she ended up staying with you.”

I grit my teeth and fold my arms across my chest to keep from reaching for my gun, trying desperately to figure out how the hell I’m going to stop this without committing another murder.

Birdie tuts impatiently, tilting her head to look out the door. “Is Marigold with you?”

Davis shakes his head and moves away so she can shut the door. “She’s back home with the kids. Lots of downed trees and power lines, but passable enough. Didn’t want to risk them out on the road yet.”

“Oh.” Birdie’s lips are pressed thin, staring toward the kids, but not quite.

“So the roads are too risky for your wife and kids but not mine?” I challenge, dropping my voice to a deadly volume and puffing my chest out.

I may be twenty years older than Davis, but I’ve got three inches and at least fifty pounds of muscle on him.

I could flip him as easily as I do the tractor tire.

Davis’s voice goes up comically when he shifts back on his brown cowboy boots with a brow cocked and repeats, “Yours?”

Panic that I’ve revealed too much has my heart beating triple time when I see Birdie’s mouth hang open while she blinks up at me. There’s no walking it back, so I simply don’t respond.

“Papa?” Sydney asks, drawing our attention to her sliding off the couch in one of my black, long-sleeved T-shirts since her pajamas need washing. “Who’s he?” She hides half behind me, and I drop my arms so I can hold her hand, so tiny in mine.

“Papa?” Davis’s voice goes up even higher. “Oh, Freddy and Pete are gonna have a field day with this. ”

“Davis,” I bark when Dustin jumps off the couch to stand on my other side, widening his stance to mimic mine. “You like your job, don’t you?”

“Shit.” He scuffs the toe of his boot along the floor at my implied threat.

A handful of people know that I bought into Berenson Trucking after years of resistance when Russell remarried so he could spend more time at home, which is partly why I’ve decided to semi-retire.

While I can afford to fully retire and then some, I’m not the type who can do nothing all day but stare at the wall, so I’ll be working part-time at the warehouse.

Though I won’t be Davis’s direct boss per se—that would still be my brother—I do have the power to send him packing if I so choose.

Not that I would do that to him, which is why he eventually smirks.

Birdie crouches before Sydney. “This is Davis. I told you about him, right? We’re going to live with him and his family until we can get an apartment.”

“Papa, too?” Sydney tugs her hand out of mine to loop her arm around my knee.

“Well…no.” Birdie chews her bottom lip like she probably wants to chew her fingernails, though she’s still sporting a fair number of bandages. “Pa—Elliott lives here.”

Sydney turns away from her mama, looping both arms around my leg, pressing her face into my jeans.

“Sydney, baby…”

“No!” Sydney runs around my other side.

“What about Storm and the puppies?” Dustin asks, his shoulders falling.

Birdie sputters at first. “They’ll have to stay here with Elliott. ”

Dustin’s face breaks, and great big tears well in his eyes. “I wanna stay here!”

“Oh crap, what do I do?” Birdie asks herself, dragging her palms down her cheeks when Dustin runs to hide behind Storm.

Sensing my opening, I nod to the front door. “Get home safe, Davis.”

Davis’s lips part, and Birdie stands. “Wait, no,” she says.

I square my jaw as I look pointedly at Davis. “I said, get home safe.”

“Right.” Davis folds his ball cap between his hands before slapping it open and pulling it down over his hair. “How ‘bout I come by tomorrow morning, then?” he asks Birdie, who has stepped in front of me, trying to cajole Sydney out of hiding.

“Ok, yes, that would…that would be great. Thank you,” Birdie says over her shoulder.

I narrow my eyes when I open the door for Davis, then follow him outside to his truck, which is like a third child to him. “I’ll blow your tires out before you make it five feet onto my property with the intention of taking Birdie and the kids again.”

“Birdie?” Davis chuckles and tries to clap me on the shoulder.

“Goldie will blow out your knees if you do.” I wouldn’t put it past her, given she’s as good with her pistol as I am with my shotgun, and she isn’t afraid to use it.

“And then she’ll take Teagan and the kids, anyway, if that’s what Teagan wants. You know it.”

I grind my teeth down to the nubs, and Davis hops in his truck with a laugh, tipping the brim of his cap. “See you tomorrow.”

* * *

I don’t wait for Birdie in my room as usual.

No, I stalk her throughout the rest of the evening, on her heels everywhere she goes, petrified at the thought that by tomorrow night, she and the kids will be gone.

I don’t even leave her alone to finish putting them to bed, hunching in the darkest corner of the room while she lies down with them until they’re asleep.

The moment she peels back the comforters to slip out of bed, I’m there, lifting her into my arms before her feet can touch the floor, carrying her into my bedroom.

“Don’t go, Birdie,” I say, laying her down and undressing her from head to toe. “Don’t leave me.”

“Elliott.” Her hands are in my hair as I kiss my way down her body, rubbing my forehead back and forth along the firm swell of her lower abdomen. “I have to.”

“No, you don’t.” I lie on my stomach and part her thighs to fit my shoulders so I can inhale her scent and kiss her pussy.

“Stay with me.” I push my tongue inside her before licking up to massage her clit while she grips my hair, pulling me closer until she’s all but smothering me, comforting me. I love it.

The animalistic need to fully claim her consumes me when she cries out with her orgasm after I fuck her with two fingers while sucking her clit.

She yelps when I flip her over onto her hands and knees.

I know I’m going too fast, unable to control myself, when I curl my body over hers, hands on the mattress beside her head, and push inside her to the hilt in one thrust.

“Stay with me, Mama,” I beg, then sink my teeth into the crook of her shoulder.

“Stay, stay, stay,” I chant like a spell as I stroke in and out of her, our thighs clapping together like thunder, the room filled with the sounds of our pleasure and the cloying scent of my desperation.

“Stay with me,” I repeat when I go hurtling off the edge and cum inside the woman I want by my side for the rest of my life, as short as that will be.

“I can’t,” she whispers with a croak, her body shaking with the aftershocks of rushed pleasure beneath me, her pussy pulsing around my spent cock.

I swallow, dropping my head beside hers on the mattress and nuzzling her cheek. “Why, Birdie? Why?”