Page 1 of The Reluctant Siren (Texas Sirens: Legacy #2)

Harlow Dawson sat on the bench in front of the locker that had been designated as hers since the day The Hideout opened and wondered if she should even be here.

Maybe instead of shoving her body into a corset and making sure her butt floss was properly positioned she should be at home, drinking tea and questioning all of her life choices. Beginning with the decision to hire Daisy O’Donnell. Sweet girl. Funny. Nice to have around. Cursed.

Firing her had been an excellent decision, but even weeks later everyone kept staring at her like she kicked a puppy.

A puppy who inadvertently sicced a hellhound on her.

“Hey, you okay?”

Chloe Lodge-Taylor looked like she’d come straight from work, which given the fact that the club didn’t even open until nine said something about the young woman’s work ethic. She worked for one of her father’s companies as a junior executive, but Harlow often wondered if the job wasn’t making her friend utterly miserable.

“I heard there was some trouble a couple of weeks ago. Sorry. I was in New York last week when Hurricane Daisy really blew through this time. Then I was in London and Madrid.”

Which all sounded lovely if she thought for a second Chloe was taking some time to smell the sangria. She wasn’t. She wouldn’t have done touristy stuff. She wouldn’t have taken a spa day or found new friends. Harlow was worried about her.

But wasn’t she doing the exact same thing?

“Is there a worse storm than a hurricane? Like what if a hurricane also threw bombs all over the place. Shit. I know where they got the idea for Sharknado. That writer met Daisy.”

Ruby Lockwood poked her head around the corner. Her locker was on the next row, but it wasn’t like she couldn’t hear everything that happened in this part of the lounge.

“Get this, Chloe. On her very first day…”

“First hour,”

Harlow corrected because this was a story they would tell for all of time.

“On her first day, in the first hour of her employment, our brand-new admin not only sicced the deranged Dawson dad on us, but also managed to become a material witness in an ongoing drug investigation. Big Tag was forced to hire a bodyguard, who Daisy promptly fell in love with. They had to hide out in Sanctum because there was a cartel hit on her. They shot up Nate’s new truck and everything.”

Chloe sat down with a sigh.

“Oh, dear. Tell me everyone’s alive.”

Harlow waved off the fear.

“She distracted the assassins with her boobs and her dad turned the cartel on itself and all the bad guys are dead. Mostly. And did I mention the fall in love part? I’ve been told I’ll receive the save the date soon.”

It was how things tended to go on that side of the club.

The Hideout was made up of what Harlow liked to think of as two weird cults. There was the one she belonged to, which consisted mostly of young men and women who grew up with parents who played at a club called—sigh—The Club, owned by Chloe’s father, Julian Lodge. And the spy kids whose parents founded a club called Sanctum, watched over by a man everyone called Big Tag, who was a spy. The corporate kids, as Seth Taggart called them, mainly worked in fields like finance and law. The spy kids, well, there was a reason they had a conference room that sometimes was filled with people who went by names like Mr. Black or Ms. White.

Or Ms. Magenta, but at least she knew what to call those two.

Sometimes she worried she fit better on that side of the club.

Opening a private investigations agency apparently wasn’t on the same level as Chloe’s junior executive or her own sister’s budding art career. Sometimes her dads acted like she was rebelling when they literally made their living as detectives. Well, outside of the massive trust fund they came into when they were younger.

“Daisy O’Donnell is getting married?”

Chloe huffed.

“I did not have that on my bingo card this year. Her cousin getting a venereal disease was, though. Did you see his latest… Do I call them girlfriends?”

“And I’m out.”

Ruby disappeared again.

“Let me know when we’ve moved on to new material.”

Harlow groaned, facing her childhood friend. Ruby had a point. They’d had this talk before. A lot.

“I don’t think he has girlfriends. But then it’s not like you have boyfriends.”

Chloe had been circling Seth Taggart since they were teens, though it didn’t reach the level of enemies who would almost certainly end up as lovers until they opened The Hideout. Chloe had rejected Seth’s advances since the first night when he offered to top her and she told him she needed more than he could ever give her.

Sometimes she wondered what would have happened if Chloe had been brave enough to give him a try. If she hadn’t let being burned by some other guy before hold her back.

Like Jensen was holding her back from giving Niall a chance.

Big, gorgeous, sweet Niall, who every sub in The Hideout thought was absolute forever Dom material. Niall, who had let her know any time she wanted to play, he was there.

He had joined the club a few months before, and in all that time she was almost certain he hadn’t slept with a single sub. At least not here. He’d never once signed up for a privacy room, and he definitely hadn’t been having sex on the floor. She would have heard about that.

“I have a boyfriend, thank you,”

Chloe announced.

And Ruby was back because this was definitely new material.

“What? Who? The last guy you were with was your college boyfriend, and you broke up because you knew you didn’t love him.”

A weird smile came over Chloe’s face. A kind of still, expectant smile. A smile that held zero humor and let Harlow know she was masking some unnamed emotion. If she was interrogating the other woman, she wouldn’t believe anything that came out of her mouth next. Oh, the basics would be true, but Chloe was hiding something.

“Tom,”

Chloe said with a brisk nod.

“Yes. We actually broke up because our career paths diverged. He went to New York to work for a start-up, and I settled in at Lodge Corp.”

Which was killing her. Oh, she said all the right things, but Chloe wasn’t happy being the heir apparent to her father’s massive conglomerate. All the money in the world wasn’t going to take the place of Chloe shoving down her creative dreams because she felt a responsibility to her family.

Unlike her own deranged dad, who had done his absolute best to ensure Harlow didn’t follow her dreams, she rather thought Uncle Julian would understand.

“So who is the new guy?”

Ruby asked.

Harlow put the pieces together. Chloe hesitated because she didn’t want to admit the truth. Because Harlow knew the real story. No wonder she’d been spending so much time in New York.

“It’s the old guy. She ran into him while she was working in the New York offices. He felt safe and warm and right in line with her new life plan, which is to stay safe and warm and never go for what she truly wants.”

Chloe’s eyes flashed with a bit of the fire she’d had as a teen.

“Oh, really? Is this judgment of yours about Seth? I should follow my lust and forget everything I know about him? Maybe get my heart broken? You want to talk about the new guy and how you make doe eyes at him and never say yes to him?”

She was being too harsh.

“I’m sorry. I don’t have a right to judge. But it is Tom, isn’t it?”

Harlow remembered him being a “nice”

guy. Said all the right things. Mostly did the right things. Something had felt off to Harlow. He was a bit self-centered, but he could turn on the charm when he needed to. He had definitely liked the idea of being attached to Julian Lodge’s daughter.

Chloe sat up straighter.

“As a matter of fact, your detective skills are excellent. We met up at a conference and now I see him when I’m in New York. It’s getting serious.”

She could see so easily what Chloe was doing, but it wouldn’t do anything but start a fight to argue with her. Chloe could be extremely stubborn.

“If you’re happy then I’m happy. Are you going to bring him to the club anytime soon? I would love to see him again.”

She would love to take the man’s measure now. She glanced over at Ruby and knew she was already mentally prepping the thorough security review they would be conducting on Chloe’s new/old boyfriend.

Chloe grimaced.

“I’m not ready for that. If I bring him to Dallas, then he gets on my dad’s radar. I’d like to be engaged before that happens. If I’ve got a ring on my finger, I think my papa will rein Dad in.”

Like Harlow herself, Chloe had two fathers. The corporate side of the club was heavily invested in the ménage lifestyle. Harlow and her sister, Greer, had a reasonable dad named Ben, a deranged dad who went by Chase or Asshole, depending on who was talking to him, and a ridiculously cool mom named Natalie. Chloe had a scary dad named Julian, a cool dad named Finn, and her supersmart mom, Dani.

“You’re that serious?”

Chloe shrugged.

“It’s time. I’m not getting any younger, and I don’t want to wait until I’m forty to start a family. I’m well established at Lodge Corp. All I’m missing is a husband. Tom fits the bill.”

“Chloe, this is a marriage, not a corporate merger,”

Ruby said and then shook her head.

“Sorry. I’m just… Is he in the lifestyle? Does he know you’re in the lifestyle? How does he feel about two dads walking you down the aisle, and it’s not like a blended family situation?”

Oh, Julian and Finn blended. Often and intimately, but she got what Ruby was saying.

A flush crossed Chloe’s delicate features, answering the question before she did.

“I’m easing him in. He comes from a conservative family. They don’t know about Papa yet. I mean, Tom does, but we’re figuring out how to tell his parents. Anyway, that’s not happening tomorrow. So Daisy’s getting married. Are we taking bets on what natural disaster will strike?”

This was a mess but one that would have to wait because if she pushed too hard, Chloe would shut down.

Or point out what a hypocrite you’re being. Again.

Because she was.

A vision of Niall in his leathers flashed across her brain as Ruby talked about how the betting book they kept in the bar was getting full of all sorts of apocalyptic possibilities for the O’Donnell/Carter upcoming nuptials. Given no one had guessed a helicopter filled with assassins would buzz the last wedding they’d all gone to, the bets were getting wild.

She’d thought about asking Niall if he would be her plus one to the wedding of Aidan O’Donnell and Carys Taggart. She’d wondered what he would look like in a suit. Wondered how it would feel to dance with him.

Now she was thinking about whether or not he wanted to witness the apocalypse that would surely be Daisy’s wedding. If she got an invite. She had fired the bride.

But that had led to her getting a superhot bodyguard and this whole wedding thing. So when she thought about it, Daisy didn’t get Nate without her. She should totally be invited to the wedding, and it would be a shock to everyone if she came with someone other than Ruby.

There it was. She could say it was all to win a bet. Maybe Niall would be into that and then, well, as long as they were there, she might as well become his sub for the night.

Then she remembered the last time she took on a Dom and how she ended up in jail. Not that he’d put her there. He’d simply left her in a situation where she had to call her reasonable dad to save her, and naturally he brought his insane twin and she now had a watchdog.

You’re going to kill yourself with this job. You can’t expect me to stand by and watch it happen. Can’t you see how worried your mother is? This is not what we wanted for your life.

Her father had chased her down to the café where she and Ruby had been planning strategies to grow their private investigation business, and to say he put a damper on the meeting would be an understatement.

After a moment Chloe stood and gave them a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

“I think I heard your sister. We’re going to dinner at Top to discuss her doing a series for the new London office. You know my dad thinks having Dawson originals hanging in the place is lucky. You two have fun tonight. I’m going to pause my membership for a while. I’m spending a lot of time in New York. Gabe and John will be thrilled since they refuse to play on nights when I’m here.”

Oh, they refused to play at The Hideout when their sister was in the house, but she was pretty sure they went to Sanctum on those nights. Harlow sometimes went, especially when a new crop of Doms was released into the wild.

None of them affected her the way Niall did. Not a damn one.

“I don’t have to have super investigative skills to know that is a bomb waiting to go off.”

Ruby kept her voice down since they weren’t exactly alone.

In the distance she could hear her sister greeting Chloe. Greer Dawson was pretty much the perfect big sister. Gorgeous and friendly and loving and unbelievably talented. She inherited their mom’s artistic skills and had already had two well-attended showings of her works here in Dallas and another in Austin.

Greer Dawson made her parents so proud. They didn’t worry about her at all.

“Chloe doesn’t explode,”

Harlow replied as she pulled her T-shirt over her head.

“That’s the problem. She stays as far as she can from big emotion. Honestly, her sniping at Seth is one of the healthiest things she does.”

Ruby went quiet for a moment, and Harlow had the worst suspicion her BFF/business partner had been making the same connections she had. But then the other woman sighed.

“So are you watching or participating tonight?”

She always came in ready to participate and then something would happen and she would think about Jensen’s big, strong, lying hands on her body and she would offer to work a shift in the bar or help out the Doms with their scenes. Today had been a lot. They took a new case that connected to the one Daisy had started. While they had shut down the cartel that had come after Daisy, they apparently weren’t the only ones using the system put in place to move drugs through the city.

“I don’t know,”

she replied honestly.

“Is it about the Falls case? It’s reminiscent of the case you were working when…”

Ruby let the words trail off.

Harlow’s first instinct was to ask what she was talking about. The case that led her straight into Jensen Wiley’s arms and then to a jail cell had nothing to do with the case they were working for Miranda Falls’s mom.

Except they were both missing persons cases where a daughter got caught up in a dangerous world.

“I suppose it brings back memories,”

she admitted because she needed at least one person who knew what she was thinking. Her parents knew what had happened, though she hadn’t given them the name of the man who had sold her out. Jensen Wiley. After she fell in love with him and gave him everything and planned a whole life with him.

“It’s another young woman who is in trouble because she followed a guy into a bad situation.”

“Are you talking about Miranda or yourself?”

Ruby asked.

“Both, I suppose, and Sarah Gains. She was…”

“The woman you went to California to find.”

Ruby sat down beside her.

“I know it was before you took me on, but I do my research, bestie. I’ve always thought it was interesting that she got out even after you ended up in jail from the raid. Two weeks later Sarah was on a plane home. You know she says a guy helped her.”

A guy who she described as looking an awful lot like Jensen.

“If he did save her, it was out of guilt for giving me up. He had his own agenda,”

Harlow said with a sigh.

“And it was years ago. I was a kid.”

“It was two years ago, and you were twenty-four. Look, I don’t know everything that went on with the case in LA, but I do know this new case is similar and might be too much of a reminder of what happened there. If you don’t want to pursue this we can talk to Big Tag,”

Ruby offered.

“Honestly, we should anyway. He told us if we ever need muscle, he’ll give us a good deal. I actually think the big bastard meant that. Like free bodyguards if we’re going somewhere dangerous. This case has the potential to get dangerous, and it’s going to be you on the line since I’m glorified tech support.”

Sure she was.

“You’re a brilliant hacker. It makes no sense to send you in. You need to be on the outside watching me. Besides, I have way more lifestyle practice than you do, and it’s an underground club. I agree about talking to Big Tag.”

She took a deep breath because she’d also been thinking about this all day.

“I’m going to need a partner.”

Ruby grinned.

“You mean a top. Wanna go the girl route? I’ve been watching Kala and I think I can totally whip your ass.”

The thought made her laugh.

“No. We’re not going the lesbian route. I meant what I said. You’re going to play tech on this one. I need a big bad Dom the other tops will open up to because they think he’s one of them. I know Big Tag could assign one, but that guy will inevitably report back to my dads. It’s why Big Tag is so very willing to not charge the competition. It keeps psycho dad off his case.”

To say Chase Dawson had been against his daughter opening her own private detective agency would be another one of those understatements. He’d forbidden her to work outside the agency he and her other dad formed when they were way younger than she was. So she’d asked the owner of Sanctum to allow her to not only join the BDSM training class—her dad objected to that, too—but also to allow her to train with his bodyguards. Her father had been all for the training since he’d thought she would quit. Ian Taggart had offered her what she liked to call the Kill the Girl class.

It had been a rough six months, but the man knew how to ensure his people could survive.

Ruby winced.

“You’re probably right. And he’ll freak if he knows we’re following up on a case that got our admin put on a hit list. So who do we ask? If the twins are around for a while we might be able to get Cooper or that Zach guy to do it. Although he’s a little scary.”

“He’s a CIA operative and I would say Cooper McKay could be our guy but if we get him scratched up, we have to deal with Kala and I just can’t. No. I was thinking of someone else. Someone who’s ex-military and owns his own business. Someone who knows the lifestyle but didn’t grow up with everyone, so none of the dads can guilt him into talking.”

It was a terrible idea. An awful idea. The first idea she’d had that made her excited. He was the best choice. It only made sense. Her rational, professional self was going to have her emotional scaredy cat in a choke hold.

And then her horny, curious self could finally play.

Ruby’s eyes widened.

“Niall Griffen? The dude you have the worst crush on but you’re too scared to even play with? You want to go undercover with Niall Griffen?”

It sounded…not so bad. This could work.

“I don’t know. He’s a solid guy. He passed all the background checks, and Gabe thinks he’s great. I mean we’ve only known him for a couple of months, but I can say the same for anyone Big Tag would assign to us, and he won’t feel the need to tell my father everything. Also, Big Tag would probably assign someone who wouldn’t end up trying to sleep with me, and that means a married dude, and it would be awkward.”

“I agree. If you’re going in, you need to look like you’re really a Dom and his sub. That would be hard if the guy can’t touch you in an intimate way. You would have to get super comfortable with him. Physically.”

Ruby nodded.

“I like this plan. It feels like a backdoor route to getting what you want. You don’t have to admit you like him. You need him and you’re going undercover as a Dom and sub, and oops, there’s probably only one bed.”

Her friend read way too many romance novels. But then so did she.

“Fine. Maybe I want to push myself, and I know if I don’t have an excuse I won’t do it.”

She glanced down the aisle and caught a glimpse of Chloe, who was still talking to her sister, but they had been joined by the infamous aforementioned Daisy O’Donnell, who was showing them her engagement ring.

Daisy was happy. A complete wreck, but happy.

Didn’t she deserve some happiness, too?

She caught Chloe’s expression before she smiled. There was a blank look like she was thinking of someone she shouldn’t. Like she was wondering what it would be like to get a ring from Seth.

Or to follow her real dreams.

“I’m going to ask him. I’m going to walk right up to him and ask if he’ll help us.”

She stood, unclasping her bra.

She didn’t have to let what happened with Jensen Wiley wreck the rest of her life. She didn’t.

Of course she also didn’t have to go into this very practical “work”

relationship with the delicious Niall Griffen wearing her heart on her sleeve either. She could use the mission to see if he was the kind of man she could trust.

“We’re doing this?”

Ruby asked with a smile that told Harlow she was on board.

“We’re doing this.”

She pulled out her corset and gave her bestie a wince.

“But I’m going to need you to get me into this thing.”

Ruby stood.

“That I can do.”

Harlow took her last deep breath for a while, but she was suddenly optimistic.

It felt good.

* * * *