Chapter 11 #2
“You’re supposed to keep it cold,” Grant says, eyeing our butter situation. “Cold hands, cold butter, hot oven. That’s the secret.”
“Her hands are freezing,” Valen says, covering mine with his. “Feel.”
Grant touches my fingers and frowns before Valen swats his hand away.
“Never mind,” he snaps. “Don’t touch her.”
Grant shakes his head but continues to stare at me. “Clover, are you okay? You’re ice-cold.”
“I’m fine,” I squeak. How the hell did I end up with four insanely hot men in my kitchen baking freaking biscuits?
Chase chuckles from across the room. “She looks good to me.”
Valen throws flour at him. I think it was an involuntary reaction to the innuendo in Chase’s tone, but it causes ten full seconds of stillness.
Then a war breaks out when Chase retaliates by throwing a chunk of butter that hits Valen’s chest with a splat.
Sterling lifts a cup of flour, and my eyes go wide. I’m shaking my head, already knowing where this is going. Sterling winks, then dumps the flour over Grant’s head before running to the other side of the room.
“Stop,” Grant yells.
Nobody does.
Chase makes a grab for the entire bag of flour, but Grant beats him to it.
They grapple with the paper bag, and then whoosh—a cloud of flour hits the air.
Flour is a weapon I didn’t know existed, but after two minutes, the dust cloud hanging in the room has everyone choking for fresh air.
Sterling opens the back door, swinging it wildly to bring clean air into the room, but it just stirs up the fine powder even more. Chase cackles as he clears the flour from his eyes.
“W-what just happened here?” I ask, while Grant carries on as though he’s not leaving a trail of flour behind him and slips two baking sheets into my oven.
It took less than five minutes for my kitchen to look like a bakery exploded. There’s flour in everyone’s hair, in our ears—in fact, I’m sure it’s gotten into every nook and cranny.
Staring at the mess, I laugh. Hard. Doubled over, hands on knees, belly-shaking kind of laugh.
I can’t even remember the last time something hit me like this.
“See?” Grant surveys the destruction with something close to satisfaction. “Bonding.”
“This…is bonding?” Valen asks, attempting to remove flour from his face with a wet paper towel, but it results in a sticky paste that won’t budge.
“This is family,” Sterling corrects quietly, staring straight at me.
The air in the room shifts. Like something warm, and fragile, and important is happening. For a moment, standing in my flour-dusted kitchen with these men who do sort of feel like family, I almost forget.
Almost believe that I could have this—safety, laughter, belonging—without waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Almost.
We clean the mess in comfortable silence, shoulders bumping, sliding around in close proximity, as families do.
The timer dings, and I jolt where I stand as though I were electrocuted. It reminds me of the shadow at my tree line earlier, and my gaze drifts that way. Was someone out there?
“Jesus, Clove. We’ve got to work on your reactions. You’re jumpier than a church mouse.” There’s no malice in Chase’s tone, just…sadness, and his eyes say it’s a character flaw he’s personally offended by.
He doesn’t want me to be upset or scared…because that’s how much they love Valen.
Grant pulls out perfectly golden biscuits that smell like heaven, then hip-checks me out of the way to set them on the counter. It’s exactly what a big brother would do to a little sister, and emotion clogs in the back of my throat.
We eat them, standing around my kitchen island, passing butter and honey. Our shoulders are pressed together in easy companionship, me with these men who are practically strangers.
Perhaps I’m losing it. This is exactly the type of story I’d write, except one of them would be the murderer. And at least one of them would be waiting for the perfect moment to attack. It’d be so easy here, with my guard down—
Strong arms cage me in from behind.
My eyes blur, and my mind blanks.
I drop like dead weight to the floor. Latching onto my assailant’s wrists with both hands, I duck under his arm, sweep out his leg with one of mine, then come up behind him, wrenching his arm as high up his back as I can go.
I’m breathing heavy and searching for an escape when the room comes back into focus.
Valen’s face down on my island, both of my hands gripping his right wrist as tightly as I can, while all the Harringtons stare at me with wide-open mouths.
“What the fuck just happened?” Chase mutters.
“Clover,” Valen grunts below me, and I jump back, releasing him.
He rises slowly and turns to face me even slower.
“You. You were on my left,” I whisper. “How. When.”
Valen lifts his hands, palms up. “I’m sorry I startled you. I was only going to remove a chunk of dough from your hair.” There’s flour on his cheek I can’t look away from.
“The…dough.” Blood whooshes in my ears.
“Jesus, Clover.” Sterling chuckles. “I guess that old guy does know a thing or two about self-defense. I’ve never seen someone disarm Valen that quickly.”
“I’m s-sorry.” Run. “I should…” Hide.
Grant stares at me with kind, sad eyes.
“I need to… I have to…”
“Breathe, Honeybee.” Valen cautiously reaches for my hand, then guides me back to the island. He squeezes it twice, like he knew I was struggling to stay in the moment—one squeeze to let me know this was real, and another to drag me from my mind.
He grounds me in a way nothing else ever has, and it’s absolutely terrifying.
Everything ends eventually.
What will happen when my threats are finally solved? Will he move on to his next client? His next case?
Will he forget me all over again?
“Do you want to talk about it?” Grant asks.
I shake my head violently.
“So,” Chase says, studying me in a way that makes me want to hide. “Distraction it is.” He winks. “You and Valen. How’s the roommate situation working out?”
And just like that, I’m slipping from my fear spiral and solidly into my embarrassed one.
“Fine,” I say at the same time Valen says, “Great.”
“Suspicious,” Sterling stage-whispers.
“You’re both awful,” I mutter, but my heart rate is slowing and a smile is peeking through.
Grant’s phone buzzes, then buzzes again, and his expression shifts from relaxed to laser-focused in half a second.
“What?” Valen asks, scanning the outside world through my windows.
“It’s Chief.” Grant’s reading fast, his jaw tightening each time his focus returns to a new line on his screen. “A package arrived. He’s guarding it.”
A shiver sweeps through me.
“Another one?” I ask numbly. “But…we’re all here. Right. Here.”
Grant’s already pressing buttons on his phone. “Roman? Yeah, Chief sent photos. Can you—” His gaze darts to me while he listens. “How long?” Another agonizing pause. “We’ll be here.”
He presses end on his phone and searches for Valen. Their gazes collide with unspoken words before he turns to me. “You need to get cleaned up. Roman’s coming over. He said we need to see this in person.”
“But…where is it?” I ask.
Grant holds my gaze, but his sympathetic expression can’t hide his discomfort. “They left this one at the Chug. In the podcast booth. Madi found it.”