Cal looked down at her. “Are you all right?”
Was she? When she’d realized Stan was dead, just for a moment her sight had morphed and it hadn’t been Stan she was looking at. It had been Hawk’s face, draining of life as his blood stained the floor all around her. She hadn’t screamed. She hadn’t screamed then. Quiet. She’d been quiet. She’d learned that early on. She could keep quiet or Hawk might take her tongue.
“Natalie? Natalie?” Cal’s hard tone brought her out of the past. “Stay with me.”
She shook her head, trying to come back to the now. She had to stay in the game. There would be time enough for her nightmares later. “I’m fine. Sorry. I gave Mr. Kirkman his usual. He books two hours, uses one for deep tissue service, and then he actually pays to have me lock him in. I wake him up after fifty minutes. He claims it’s the only time he gets to be alone. When I knocked to wake him up, he didn’t answer. I unlocked the door, and he was dead.”
Cal sighed, almost reaching out to touch her. It wasn’t unusual. He was a Dom and she was a sub, no matter how badass she tried to be. But that was a problem for her because no matter how much she liked her boss’s husband, she just couldn’t let a Dom touch her. She moved back, almost jumping to avoid the contact.
“Sorry, Natalie.” Cal took a step back, too, as though giving her extra space. Nat couldn’t miss the fact that his wife put her hand into his as though softening the rejection.
Yep, that was her. Natalie Buchanan. Rejecter of affection. Able to blow a Dom’s ego with a single look.
Killer.
“Can I go now?” She wanted to get back to her room. Four walls. Lots of locks. No expectations.
Fuck, she was lonely. And she didn’t even know how to take a single comforting touch.
Cal shook his head. “I’m sorry. I think you need to stay here until the sheriff sorts everything out. He probably had a heart attack, but you never know. Someone may have questions. Just know that I’ll be right here with you. I’ll protect your interests. And I don’t care what the sheriff says. Someone better call Lodge or heads will roll. Probably mine. Why don’t you go sit down, Natalie? I’ll handle this.”
Julian Lodge. Her…what the fuck was he? Savior? Dude who kept her out of jail? Mentor?
She walked down the hallway in a bit of a daze, her brain playing through the past. Julian Lodge had been the one to come to the jail the night she’d killed Hawk. She could remember it so vividly. One moment she’d been trying to explain that the man they knew as Eric Norris wasn’t the upstanding businessman he’d presented himself to be and that she’d been his victim. The next, a big, elegant man in a designer suit walked in followed by another man with hard eyes and a large briefcase. Julian Lodge and Finn Taylor. Finn had turned out to be a lawyer. She’d been out of jail within hours, remanded to Julian’s custody. She’d been on a private jet to Dallas with Kitten and Gretchen. Finn Taylor turned out to be Kitten’s cousin. He was also Lodge’s submissive and partner. They’d been looking for Kitten for months. They took Nat and Gretchen in, too. When the plane had touched down in Dallas, they’d been greeted by two people. One was a big man named Leo, who couldn’t hide his Dom stature behind all the huggy shrink crap in the world, and a pretty blonde woman. When she’d shrunk back from Leo, he’d nodded and walked away, leaving her with Janine.
She really wanted to talk to Janine, but it was just a crutch.
She sat down in the private waiting room. She liked to call it the green room because even the light was a low, natural color.
The door opened and Gretchen stormed in. “What the fuck is going on? Chris just told me my last two appointments were cancelled. What’s happening?”
“Stan died.”
Gretchen’s mouth turned down as she slumped into the seat next to Nat. “Are you shitting me?”
Gretchen had a terrible potty mouth, but Nat had gotten used to it. “Nope. He dropped dead on my table.”
“Fuck. That’s terrible. No wonder we’re shut down.” She turned to Nat, her face relaxing a little. “Did you, you know, find him?”
“Yep.” All six foot dead of him.
Gretchen sat there for a moment. “Geez, Nat. I’m sorry about that. I’m sure that was stressful.”
Yep. Stressful. “I’m fine.”
“Can I get you something? Water? Do you need me to work your shoulders? You carry all your stress in your shoulders.” Gretchen frowned, a concerned look. “Your shoulders are up around your ears. Let’s find a room and I’ll start some lavender aromatherapy and we’ll get you relaxed.”
She must be really bad if Gretchen was so concerned.
Before she had a chance to answer, the door opened again, and Cal walked in, a dark look on his face. “Natalie, we’re going to need to go to the station.”
Paperwork? All she wanted to do was go home. The last thing she wanted was to be stuck in the Willow Fork Sheriff’s Department “Why?”
“The circumstances of Stan’s death are not natural. They’re bringing you in for questioning. I’ve convinced the sheriff not to handcuff you. I know how you feel about that, Natalie. I’m going to do everything I can to keep you out of a holding cell.”
Holding cell. Cage. Cuffs. Nat took a deep breath, but the oxygen didn’t quite fill her lungs. The room spun and blessed darkness took her.
Chase Dawson yawned, forcing himself to a semi-awake state. It had been a late night. Mandy, Sandy, something like that, had been voracious. And the tiniest bit frightening. A twinge went through his lower back. Mandy whatshername believed in a quality of athleticism to sex that just might be past his thirty-five years. He was getting fucking old.
God, he couldn’t believe he missed the days of Kitten. Undemanding Kitten, who had to sign a contract that he couldn’t have sex with her. His nights with Kitten had been filled with petting her head while she kneeled at his feet as he watched a game or worked on his computer. And she’d gotten him beer. Sure, she sometimes got lost between the living room and the kitchen, but she was utterly undemanding.
When the fuck had sex gotten boring?
The door opened, and Julian walked in the room, followed by his wife, Danielle.
Dani was here? What the hell had he done? He searched his memory trying to connect Mandy/Sandy with the twistable spine and way too much strength in her thighs to Danielle, because if he’d fucked with her sister or something, he was about to get his ass kicked.
“Thanks for coming down on short notice, Chase. I was surprised you didn’t go with Ben,” Julian said.
“I don’t do airplanes.”
Julian’s mouth turned down. “You don’t do airplanes?”
He shook his head. “Nope. They crash. Like a lot.” He tried to stay out of small, pressurized metal cans whether they were at thirty thousand feet or under the ocean. He was a human. Not a fish or a bird. Chase believed in Darwinism, and that included not allowing his brilliant mind to be selected out because he put too much faith in technology.
Julian stopped and took a long breath. He did that a lot around Chase. Chase was deeply aware that Julian would rather deal with Ben. Everyone did. It didn’t bother him. “Chase, you were a Navy SEAL.”
“Hey, once a SEAL, always a SEAL.” Except those fuckers who’d tried to kill him a few months ago. Of course, they were trying to kill Ben and had gotten him by mistake. Fuck. Even murdering bastards preferred Ben to him.
“You understand it stands for sea, air, and land. How the hell did you handle that? Don’t you have to make a HALO jump?”
He shuddered. “Ben insisted we get certified. What can I say? I was younger then.” And Ben had pushed him out of the plane. Oh, he hadn’t laid a hand on him, but that invisible tether that connected them had forced Chase to follow his brother when the danger was high.