Chapter 9
Walker slept fitfully that night, images of someone assaulting Serena parading through his head, interspersed with fantasies where they hadn’t stopped with a simple, virtuous kiss.
By four, he surrendered to the inevitable and got up, walked into the kitchen, and started coffee.
He knew he’d be up in an hour or so anyway, and that he, Quentin and Kujo would spend the morning integrating their systems with those of the Brotherhood Protectors in Montana before starting work at The Menagerie.
It was good work, necessary work. Still, it felt secondary to the knot sitting heavy in his chest whenever he flashed back to seeing Serena in a crumpled heap on the floor.
He poured a mug of coffee and added his favorite creamer, then walked to the courtyard set between the two wings at the back of the house.
They hadn’t really planned on making the area when they’d built the house, but it’d evolved as the ranch itself had.
So they’d put time and energy into laying the flagstones, into choosing furniture that would be comfortable and durable.
A tiered fountain was set off in one corner next to Hunter’s herb garden and provided the soothing sound of running water, like the creek did from the front porch.
Their utilization of the area had evolved again when they started hosting veterans, and now, whenever they had guests, they used the courtyard to give both themselves and their visitors privacy.
He settled into one of the deck chairs and listened to the world come alive around him.
An owl hooted, the sound lonely and echoing in the predawn hours.
Here and there, a cricket chirped. All around him, the wind sighed through the pines and the pi?ons, steady and familiar, offset by the tinkle of water from the fountain.
He’d spent his adult life traveling the world with the army, and yet no place had ever compared to red rock country. Being able to live here full time and do a job he’d been trained to do, one that helped others without the military structure, made everything seem almost right.
And because he seemed to be in a thoughtful mood lately, he allowed himself to think about a piece he hadn’t even realized was missing until it smacked him in the face.
Serena.
He kept himself in the friend zone with her, and now he was kicking himself.
Why had he let his ex’s words put boundaries on his relationship with Serena?
He’d admitted to himself yesterday that he was scared of it going sideways, and hey, that was honest and true and so touchy feely their psychologist from back in the day would have been proud.
Last night everything had changed when Serena kissed him. The phantom warmth of her lips on his still lingered and he wondered what it would be like to claim her lips without hesitation, without restraint now that they were grown-ass adults.
But romancing her would have to wait, if it even occurred at all. Between launching this new venture and ensuring her safety while they figured out who’d assaulted her, his priorities were clear and they had nothing to do with them as a couple.
Squaring away how Last Light could help Garrett in his investigation would be his first priority this morning.
Because Kujo hadn’t been wrong yesterday.
Shielding Serena was going to be their first case, made all the more important because of his ties with her and the feelings that’d been lying dormant for two decades.
He finished his cup as the sky began to lighten and birdsong seeped into the morning. And like that morning three months ago when he’d sat on the front porch with Tate, he heard movement in the kitchen. This time it wasn’t Hunter, it was Quentin.
His friend would be thrilled that the coffee was already made.
Because Quentin had the dietary habits of a raccoon, he’d be fine with simply coffee, but that didn’t work for Walker.
His team needed to be sharp and fueled. He guessed Quentin’s lack of prioritizing food came from spending so many hours in front of a computer screen after he’d mustered out of the army, grabbing whatever calories he could when he remembered to eat.
Walker stood and headed into the house to start his day, already mentally inventorying the contents of the fridge.
He glanced at his watch and decided Quentin could wait a few minutes. It wasn’t too early to call Garrett and put together a game plan.
Serena woke early and spent some time going through email, then deep dove into Facebook and the Rimrock Creek chat app. The incursion at The Menagerie was the number one topic, because of course it was. While she loved the exposure for her business, the reason for it still sucked.
She stepped out onto the cute little porch an hour later, inhaling the morning air as the sun crested the mountain behind the house.
She’d slept soundly, and, miracle of miracles, her head didn’t throb.
Even the knot on her forehead had gone down.
Considering yesterday’s altercation, it was the best outcome she could have hoped for.
Lila had already texted, asking how her night had gone. She’d replied to her friend, telling her all was well, but not revealing how her dreams had been filled with Walker, and how memory had tangled with the present.
In the light of day she pondered the kiss they’d shared last night and the way it had rocked her down to her foundation.
She wished it was something as simple as her feeling vulnerable and reaching out to center herself.
But it’d been far more than that, and she wasn’t going to sidestep the reality of it.
Everything she’d seen in Walker as a man far surpassed the boy she’d once loved, and that realization sent a quiet thrill through her.
She remembered their awkward first time out by the lake, on a sleeping bag with the full moon riding overhead.
It had all seemed terribly romantic. Walker had known a little bit more about sex than she had, but not much.
It mattered that they’d been each other’s firsts.
Every time after that had gotten better, until they’d been damn good at it, she thought with a fond grin.
Leaving that summer had nearly broken her.
She’d wanted to stay with Madeline, with Walker, with the life that felt right—even with the Addies of the world--but her senior year of prep school beckoned and she’d bucked her father enough by insisting on spending her summers in Rimrock Creek.
He would have much rather she stayed at the prep school and surged ahead of her peers.
Her limited interactions with her father had been a battle since her mother’s death, and her return that summer had been no different. But this time she’d made the decision to chart her own course.
She’d finished high school with honors, then earned her bachelor’s in political science from Georgetown on his dime. It’d been an interesting course of study. Not something she’d have selected on her own, but it’d been all about prepping for law school.
Her acceptance into the Georgetown master’s degree program for business management on scholarship had led to an epic argument.
He’d basically threatened to disown her if she didn’t abandon her “silly plans” and pursue a law degree at Harvard as they’d agreed.
She’d had the grades to do it, and he had the money to send her to the ‘right’ school.
It wasn’t so much that she’d dared have an idea of her own, it was that she’d abandon Harvard to get a lesser degree, and on scholarship.
To him, that’d been a black eye he couldn’t recover from, not when he’d bragged to his friends that his brilliant daughter was going to be working for the same firm someday.
Serena had never been more than a shiny, pretty trophy to Parker Gates, just like his second wife.
Serena had often wondered if Jessica Gates was naturally meek around her husband, or if he’d laid hands on her.
Considering her stepmother was a consummate hostess and political animal, Serena was pretty sure it was the second and hadn’t been overly shocked at how little she felt when it came to the couple.
When she’d responded that she never agreed to a damn thing, the fallout had lasted months, with him vacillating between screaming and icy silence before he finally kicked her out of their very fashionable, very expensive brownstone.
She’d known it was coming, of course, and had been saving every penny she could, so had put up with the verbal and emotional abuse, staying out of his way as much as possible.
Her mother had left her a decent trust that matured when she turned twenty-one, and she’d used some of that to set herself up in a safe apartment near the campus.
When it was all said and done, not having Parker in her life hadn’t hurt as much as she’d thought.
Then again, her heart had already been bruised enough from the loss of her mother.
The fact he’d never seemed to grieve the woman who’d supposedly been the love of his life had been a bitter kind of icing on the cake.
Then he’d married Jessica less than a year after Crystal’s death.
By the time she returned to Rimrock Creek again for a visit, Walker had joined the army and was gone someplace overseas, so that summer together had been their moment in the sun.
And now they were both here, twenty years older and wiser.
Twenty years smarter. She wondered, as she stepped off the porch and headed for the main house, what they would do with it.
“I talked to Garrett this morning,” Walker said over breakfast. It was the four of them this morning, with Jesse choosing to eat at her place, as she had last night.
He suspected it was because she thought this was a business activity, even though he’d bet she was dying of curiosity over what Serena was doing here.
“He had a deputy sit on your place overnight,” he continued. “No activity. If nothing else happens this morning, we can head back later today.”