Page 13 of The Reluctant Siren (Texas Sirens: Legacy #2)

Harlow wished the ground would open up and swallow her whole.

Or sometimes this building got raided by… She wasn’t sure who, but she’d heard stories. Maybe some rival CIA team would come in and kill them all and then she could rest in some peace because she would get none right now.

Deranged Dad pointed Taggart’s way.

“You are supposed to monitor her.”

Taggart sat back, tossing her dad a quizzical look.

“You know she’s an adult, right? She has all the papers and everything.”

“Look, Ian, you might let your girls run around the world blowing shit up, but I run a tighter household,”

her dad shot back.

“He does not,”

her mom said, sounding slightly exasperated. She moved into Harlow’s space.

“You okay, baby?”

She loved her mom. So fucking much. Her mom had been through hell and still stood there with all the love in the world to give and all she really wanted to do was burst into tears and tell her mom everything.

But Deranged Dad was here.

“I’m fine,”

Harlow told her with a tight smile.

“Even if I were to agree that a tight ship was being run in your household, can we both acknowledge that Harlow no longer lives in that household?”

Ian sounded so reasonable. It must be nice.

“Because she’s a twenty-six-year-old woman and not a wayward teenager?”

“I believe I made all of these points,”

Papa said, throwing her a sympathetic look.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. He’s been on edge ever since the whole incident with Liam’s daughter. When we got the call, he pretty much lost his shit. I would have texted and asked if you needed anything.”

“Are you kidding me? She’s involved in some kind of drug ring and you’re perfectly fine with that?”

Deranged Dad was in a full-on panic.

“She’s doing a job,”

Papa countered.

“Like we do from time to time. You know happy places and people rarely need to be investigated.”

“Well, she’s not exactly involved with the drug ring,”

Ian pointed out.

“It’s more like she’s trying to take them down.”

Her mentor gave her a thumbs-up.

“You’re doing great, Harlow. You take ’em down. Only thing you did wrong this time was having these dumbass men around. What did I teach you?”

“Keep sex to the club and the bedroom and don’t take dumbasses into the field with me. That means men or women or anyone in between. You were clear that sexual fluidity did not dismiss dumbassery. Yes. I should have remembered that.”

Sometimes she wondered how her life would have gone if Ian Taggart had been her father. Oh, she would have fought her way through childhood because they were a feral clan, but she might have fit in better. And maybe she would have listened and not tried to take her boyfriend out into the field with her.

Not her boyfriend. Nope. The plant Jensen left behind. She felt like such an idiot.

Her dad’s gaze sharpened, and his head swiveled like a predator scenting prey. As though he had just realized there were two other people in the room he could blame for his precious baby’s bad choices. Not that he had mistakenly ignored them. Oh, no. The great Chase Dawson would have walked in, taken a single glance, and been able to describe what they looked like, were wearing, and probably be able to discern their chosen professions from clues.

It was hard being the daughter of a genius.

Chase Dawson was one of the world’s premiere investigators. When governments needed a Hercule Poirot, they called her dad. When a murder needed to be solved and quickly, cops had her dad on speed dial.

Niall stood up. Because he obviously had no instinct for self-preservation. He actually held out a hand.

“Hello, Mr. Dawson. I’m Niall Griffen.”

“Neil?”

Dad asked, that judgmental brow of his rising.

“Nope,”

Ian replied.

“It’s some weird Irish thing. And the other dude is named Jensen. Like who names their freaking kid Jensen?”

Jensen shrugged, obviously unbothered.

“My mom liked Supernatural but she had an old boyfriend named Jared, so I got Jensen. I think Niall’s mom read a lot of historical romance. It’s spelled weird, too. I told him he should go by Neil.”

Niall huffed.

“Not my name.”

Dad turned on her.

“I taught you not to date assholes with douchebag names.”

She nodded.

“And yet you named me Harlow and my sister Greer.”

He was good with everything except irony.

Her dad’s head shook.

“I wanted to name you Mary and Elizabeth. Solid girl names. Your mother has an old-school Hollywood fetish, and since she pushed you and your sister out of her hoo-ha, she got first dibs. And you know we should talk about it. If you were named Mary, perhaps you wouldn’t be lost in your own damn noir film.”

He could get lost in his own arguments. Honestly, they could go at it for hours, she and her dad. Once they argued for half a day over the validity of the Star Wars prequels.

It had been fun.

When had it stopped being fun? Probably around the time he had to pick her up in another state and bail her out and see her in a cast, broken and bruised. He was overly protective before, but then he’d gone into hyperdrive.

“So, you’re Chase.”

Niall seemed to realize he wasn’t getting anywhere with the most paranoid of her dads. He turned to her papa.

“You must be Ben Dawson. Again, I’m Niall Griffen. I’ve been seeing your daughter.”

Papa shook his hand and gave him a once-over.

“It’s good to meet you. How do you and Harlow know each other?”

Dad stood back and rolled his blue eyes. His arms crossed over his chest as he considered Niall.

“They met at The Hideout, of course. I suspect she’s been playing with him.”

Ian sat back.

“Oh, he’s going to do that thing, baby. I love it when he does this.”

That thing was giving a preternaturally accurate rundown of people he recently met.

She should have let Dave murder her. She blamed Jack.

“Does what?”

Niall asked, sounding hesitant for the first time.

She could do a little of it, too. She could read Niall in that moment. He was the good guy, the one all parents loved. He was the clean-cut ex-soldier who held doors open and helped old ladies cross the road. He was used to charming moms and laughing with dads. It was disconcerting to him that first Ian paid him no mind at all, and now her dad was looking at him like a bug he was getting ready to pin to his collection board.

Of course she also hadn’t figured out he was there to spy on her, so she couldn’t be too good at this.

“You’re from West Texas but not more than a couple of hours out of Fort Worth. One of the ranching towns between here and Amarillo,”

her dad began.

“You recently moved to town. Likely within the last year. You do manual labo…or you work out a lot.”

He was carefully watching Niall for any tics as he spoke. Her father was a master at reading micro expressions. He’d taught her humans give themselves away in far more fashions than lying.

“You’re a personal trainer. Ah, you own a gym. Good luck with that, buddy. You’re former military police. Is there a reason you didn’t become a cop?”

Niall shot her a surprised look.

“Is your dad psychic?”

“He’s just really good at reading people,”

she replied with a yawn because her dad could do this for hours, and it was getting late.

“He knows the MP part from the tat on his arm,”

Papa replied.

“It’s not that hard. And it’s a good bet that he already knew about you seeing him at The Hideout. He listens in when your sister and Chloe gossip. He’s the gossipiest old man I know.”

“Hey,”

Ian argued.

“I have that T-shirt, too.”

Charlotte waved her husband off.

“He prints them himself. Pay him no mind. I want to see what else Chase can figure out.”

“Well, I figured out you pissed off my daughter. What did you do to her?”

His gaze shifted to Jensen.

“You are harder to read. You’re friends. You were in the military together, but you had your tat removed.”

Jensen’s hand went to his bicep.

“You can’t see that.”

“I can see it’s a slightly different color. It’s been a while since you took it off. Were you ashamed of your service?”

Dad asked, his eyes narrow.

Jensen’s head shook.

“Of course not.”

“You have another tat, so it’s not that you suddenly didn’t like tattoos. You wanted to hide your military service,”

her father surmised.

Shit. He was going to figure it all out.

Jensen frowned her father’s way.

“I’m not sure that’s your business, sir.”

“You tell him, Jensen,”

her mom encouraged and then shrugged her dad’s way.

“You can be an intellectual bully about this. And it’s obvious Harlow is involved with both of them, so you might want to back off and give everyone some room before you start a fight.”

But her dad was merely getting started.

“You the one who gave Niall there that shiner?”

“I don’t have a shiner,”

Niall argued.

“You’ll have some bruising,”

her papa agreed with Dad.

“Maybe not a full-on black eye, but you got clocked at some point in the last couple of hours.”

Jack had taken a seat next to Charlotte and looked perfectly happy hanging out and watching her ruination.

“And Supernatural here has some bruising on his knuckles. You taking out bad guys or your friend here?”

Dad asked, gaze sharpening.

“You were fighting over my daughter?”

This was torture.

“I started dating Niall a couple of days ago. Jensen is someone I dated a long time ago. It’s that simple. I didn’t know they knew each other.”

“Uncle Chase, things got heated and confusing out there tonight.”

Jack jumped in to save her. Finally. The amount of times she’d covered for his ass… “It was a big brawl, and you know it can be hard to tell who the bad guys are in the midst of it. I think they were both trying to protect Harlow and found themselves at cross purposes.”

Oh, it had been super clear, and she was glad she’d already gotten Miranda off to the safe house. Jensen and Niall knew better than to argue, but Miranda might have pointed out that Dave got the jump on them, and there wasn’t a lot of fight to be had.

Jack really had saved the day.

Her dad looked like he wanted to argue, but he had a new target. He turned on Jack, pointing his way.

“And you knew. You knew she was involved and you didn’t bother to call anyone?”

Jack shrugged.

“I was real busy trying to make sure she didn’t get a look at me and give up my entire cover. They tend to know something’s wrong when the new girl walks in and starts asking about my family. I wasn’t supposed to have one of those since Hamilton likes his drug mules unattached or at least separated from family. I went in as the down-on-his-luck recent grad who happened to know a bit about bartending and has no one in the world to count on.”

“She would never do that.”

Dad sounded offended on her part.

“She would not walk up to you in an obvious undercover situation. Harlow knows what you do.”

She was confused, but then Chase Dawson often confused her.

“Which am I, Dad? Am I an incompetent girl or a professional who should be respected?”

Her dad ignored her, sending a nasty look Jack’s way.

“You should have called the minute you knew she was in danger. I’m talking to your dads. I’m calling Aidan.”

Jack shrugged, looking around like someone could explain it to him.

“Again, almost thirty, and my folks are well aware of what I do and what Harlow does. Have you considered therapy, Uncle Chase?”

“He’s on all the therapists’ no-go lists,”

Papa replied.

“Therapists who see him usually need therapy.”

Her mom took her hand.

“Baby, are you okay? What happened tonight?”

While Jack and Ian continued to argue with her dad, she turned to Papa and her mom.

“Everything was great until I went to pick up my client. I failed to realize the bathroom was wired for sound because we were in a lifestyle club, so I let my guard down and nearly got my client and myself killed.”

She didn’t want to admit why.

She wanted to run. That was what she wanted to do. She didn’t want to consider those words Niall had said.

I was going to tell him that she needs us both and we should gently maneuver her into a relationship where we share her.

That wasn’t happening.

She wasn’t thinking about how it would feel to be in between them. She’d been in a family where that was the norm all of her life, but she’d never actually thought about trying it. Probably because she had never met two guys she wanted at the same time.

“But you’re okay?”

Papa asked.

She nodded.

“Because of Jack. He was willing to give up his cover to save us, so if you could get Dad off his back, that would be great.”

“I get the feeling there’s a whole lot of story to those other two, though,”

her mom said as Jack started to argue with her dad.

“I’m going to get some coffee.”

Harlow stalked out and moved toward the break room. She knew this building well since she’d trained here. She learned a lot here. If only she’d learned not to have feelings for assholes.

Her mom followed behind her and she heard her mom telling her papa to give them some space.

She took a deep breath when she made it to the break room and wondered where Charlotte kept that vodka she talked about earlier.

“Sweetie, I’m sorry, but you have to know we’re worried about you. I know you’re competent,”

her mom began.

Harlow huffed out an unamused laugh.

“Oh, I assure you I wasn’t tonight. I was everything Dad has always been worried I would be. I was reckless and dumb and a complete fool.”

Her mom’s eyes had gone wide.

“So those men didn’t simply get caught up in your case. They’re why you were reckless.”

She took a long breath and turned, leaning against the sink.

“The case was supposed to be simple. I was contacted by Miranda’s mom, who like Jack mentioned, she was estranged from. He’s right about that. Hamilton likes to bring in people with pressure points and no one to turn to. I realized this was connected to what happened with Daisy O’Donnell about halfway through. The police busted it up, but they only got part of the organization, the part that was the easiest to put a finger on and say this is criminal.”

Her mother frowned.

“Hamilton is the man you were investigating in LA.”

Her arms crossed over her chest and Harlow was reminded that her mom might not be an investigator by profession, but she was still a smart cookie.

“So Jensen worked that case with you. You had no idea he was in Dallas now. Is he a fed, too?”

At least she wouldn’t have to explain it to her dads.

“No. He’s a civvie. His brother got caught up in Hamilton’s web a few years ago. He died. I wish I could believe Jensen is in this to pull down the whole organization, but I think he’s biding his time, working his way up so he can kill Hamilton himself.”

“He’s the reason you cried for a month after you came home,”

her mom surmised.

“Is he the reason you were in jail? I never understood that. You’re smart. You would have gotten out if you could. He blindsided you. Did he know it was coming or did he just save himself?”

Damn. Her mom had learned a lot from her dads. She might be an artist, but she listened and knew people.

“He claims he did it because it was getting too hot. He was scared I would get hurt. We were getting to a point in the investigation where I was going to be asked to do something that would give them power over me. It was something I had been working toward since the girl I was trying to get out was at that level, and I couldn’t get to her unless I was the same.”

Her mom paled.

“I don’t know that I wanted to hear that.”

“Please, not you, too.”

Her mom shook her head.

“No, baby. This is beyond what a PI does. I should know. Your dads have solved plenty of cases, and they’ve gone undercover for many of them. They go undercover to get information. It’s short term. They do not allow themselves to do criminal shit to get a case done. There’s no immunity for you. You’re not a cop. Jack has a whole department to advise and watch out for him. You have Ruby.”

She took a long breath because what her mother was saying wasn’t wrong.

“I know. I got caught up. Mom, I loved him. I wanted to marry him. I was ready to help him, and I used the excuse of work to convince myself it was okay. I meant to go in and find her if I could and report back to her mother. That was literally all I was going to do. It was one of my first cases, and I hadn’t even brought Ruby in so it was supposed to be simple.”

“But you met him,”

her mom said.

“It wasn’t just him.”

She shouldn’t tell her mom this, but somehow she couldn’t let her think it was all about a boy. It had always been more.

“She was caught. They wouldn’t let her call her mom or have access to the outside world. I didn’t know what was happening to her, and I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving her there. I did go to the cops. So did Jensen. They didn’t believe anything was wrong. I…I couldn’t leave her there.”

Tears shone in her mother’s eyes.

“Because of what happened to me.”

She didn’t make it a question.

She knew.

Her mom had been open about what happened to her when she was young.

Not when they were kids, of course, but once it was clear both her daughters were interested in the lifestyle, she’d told her tale.

Natalie Dawson had once been a curious young woman, having fun and exploring her sexuality, and she’d been kidnapped and raped and forced into a perverted version of the lifestyle she loved.

Her mother had saved herself and her Aunt Kate, but Harlow knew there were women who couldn’t save themselves.

Aunt Kate had been sitting by her mom when she told her tale, had brought her own daughter to listen and learn.

She could still remember how her aunt had leaned on her mom, squeezing her arm and lending her strength.

Not everyone got those friends who became family, who would do whatever it took to get you through.

Her mom cupped her face in her hands.

“Baby girl, I know you want to be the person who saves everyone, but you have to be careful. You have to remember how important you are, how deeply loved you are, and what a hole you would leave in everyone’s lives if you died. Your dad is obnoxious, but it’s because he loves you so much, and sometimes being a dad is hard on him. He never thought he would be one. Or rather I think he thought it wouldn’t mean so much to him.”

She knew her dads and their uniqueness.

“You mean he thought Papa would handle everything, and he could pat our heads and please you by being somewhat present while he did his thing.”

Her dad was way on the spectrum, but then she’d learned a lot of people were. Once she got past the word normal, she found a whole world of freaky, cool people. And her dads. If she put them together, they would be a whole person. They shared a womb and a face, and sometimes she believed her mom when she told her they shared a soul. According to her mother, it was like that with some twins, and her dad had come out with crazy skills of perception and off-the-charts intelligence and no social niceties whatsoever.

And yet he’d figured out how to love her mom and her and Greer. Her father had extreme anxiety issues, but he loved them.

“He got caught in a trap of his own making,”

her mom said with a wistful smile.

“He thought he could hold himself back, but instead he found a part of himself he didn’t know existed, that he thought entirely rested in his brother. He loves you and he recognizes so much of himself in you. Including the arrogance and recklessness.”

“I am not arrogant,”

Harlow protested.

Her mom’s brows rose.

“You are arrogant and reckless and way too hard on yourself. Baby, I love you. So much more than you can possibly know at this point, but what you did today was dangerous. If you want to be a cop, talk to Jack. I would bet he could get you into an FBI training class quickly.”

“I don’t want to be a cop.”

She sighed.

“I like investigating. I know it sounds dumb, but I like catching cheating assholes and making things easier for people to get out of a bad situation. I like finding people who’ve been lost. But I do need to recognize when I’m over my head and need to call in law enforcement. I worry my clients will get left behind.”

“What happened to the girl in LA?”

her mom asked.

“I know you came home and didn’t go back.”

“Jensen got her out,”

Harlow replied.

“It took him a week. I was planning on finding a way back in but he worked more quickly than I healed. I’m pretty sure he burned those bridges for me, but I would have tried.”

Her mom nodded like she’d expected that answer.

“So he was worried about you.”

“He nearly got me killed,”

she pointed out.

“Do you believe he thought that would happen? Or did he panic and do what he could to get you out?”

Her mom was being way too reasonable.

“He could have asked me to leave. We could have had a discussion.”

Her mom snorted.

“Yeah, because that would have gone so well. Look, I am not defending him. He hurt you, and at some point in time your dad is going to figure out who he is and he’ll lose his shit. But I can also understand wanting to protect the person you love and not quite knowing how to do it. Sometimes the men we love don’t know how to communicate, which is when it’s helpful to have a more reasonable twin hanging around. Or a friend.”

Her mother was not suggesting… “Niall lied to me. He was literally sent by Jensen to spy on me.”

“To spy or to watch out for you?”

She wasn’t doing this. “Spy.”

Her mom shrugged.

“There’s more than one way to look at things, and I say that because I watched how both of those men looked at you. And you wouldn’t be so upset if you didn’t care about them both. How long have you been seeing Niall?”

“A couple of days, but I’ll be honest I was attracted to him the minute I met him. It was only being burned by his best friend that kept me away. But Mom, he doesn’t want me. He hasn’t slept with me, and I offered. He was there to make sure I didn’t sleep with anyone else.”

“Okay, if that’s true then they’re both assholes and you should walk away,”

her mother mused.

“But you should make sure because if it’s not, then you have two men who care about you. One who seems reasonable and easy to communicate with and the other who brings out a passionate side of you. Most people can make one or the other work, but have you considered the fact that you might need both?”

“No, Mom. I have not considered sleeping with the two men who betrayed me,”

she shot back.

The door came open and Charlotte Taggart poked her head in.

“Sweetie, I think your dad is about to explode and maybe take those guys of yours with him.”

She gave Charlotte a thumbs-up.

“Tell Ian I’ll help clean his office and I know some places to hide the bodies.”

Her mom sighed.

“We’ll be right there.”

“Yeah, I’m also going to warn you that Ruby called in and she’s found a hit on the Dark Web on you and Jensen, so Jack was right,”

Charlotte said.

“Jensen’s cover is blown and you’re both in danger. Your dad is already talking about moving you home and putting a detail on you.”

Shit. She started down the hallway, hoping she wasn’t about to get kidnapped by her own parents.