Chapter Five
KINLEY
YOU’VE GOT to be fucking kidding me.
Turning on my sweet as saccharine smile, I lift my eyes to the hot agent standing in front of me, his gun tucked under his arm and his badge hooked on his pants.
I fold the paper and hand it back to him. “I’m sure there are more than enough women closer to home for you to corner and grope, Special Agent Abbot. You didn’t need to go to all this trouble for lil ‘ol me.” I turn on my sarcastic Southern drawl at the end of the statement.
His almost black eyes look back at me with no amusement.
Everything about him is serious. From his shiny black shoes and perfectly pleated black slacks that hug his hips, and dark navy button-down neatly tucked into said pants, which he’s rolled up his forearms, exposing tattoos on both arms to his wrists.
Just like last night, his beard is neatly manicured and his dark as night hair, that’s cut into a long fade, is gelled and combed to perfection.
In the light of day, his olive-toned skin almost glows golden.
The top two buttons of his shirt are open, exposing a spattering of dark hair across a very defined chest. I can’t see his chest within those two buttons, but I can see the fabric dip and mold to the wide span of impressive pecs under his broad shoulders.
“Trust me, Ms. Harlow, this is standard procedure. No special treatment is being given.”
His poker face is impressive. I’ve never seen a man who could beat my dad or my brother, Gray, but he’s pretty damn good. I wonder if it’s an FBI thing. He looks good while doing it, too.
Crossing my arms back over my chest, I look back at him with a smirk on my face. “So, what does this mean? You plan to hang around here every day?”
His eyes flick over my head to the wall and pause for a second before he blinks away whatever emotion he just tried to hide, and his gaze returns to me. “For the foreseeable future, I’ll be your shadow. At least until the threat is neutralized.”
I’m pretty sure that was irritation he just blinked away. Or anger.
Tipping my lips up, I take a breath and cock an eyebrow. “Wow, that seems like a waste of taxpayer money. I already have all the shadows I need, agent, they’ve been hanging around scaring off perceived ‘threats’ since I hit puberty and discovered boys.”
Ignoring my comment, he continues as if I didn’t just reduce his job to the annoying behavior of a brother. “I would be remiss if I didn’t remind you it would be safer, and more efficient, if I could move you to an undisclosed location for the time-being.”
This again?
“You mean easier for you?” This time, I look away in frustration. “I’m not upending my life to make yours easier.”
“Ms. Harlow, the men who have your information are dangerous men. Staying here with your family would put them in danger as well.”
I take a step toward him, my head tipping back to meet his dark eyes.
“Agent, the men who have my information are going to look for me here, whether I’m with my family or not.
Why would I separate myself from guaranteed safety to take a chance out there with someone whose abilities I know nothing about? ”
A tick in his sharp as a knife jaw draws my eyes, and my gaze travels to his lips. His beard is cut perfectly to the shape of his cupid’s bow, and I wonder if he takes the time to trim it every day.
He’s looking down his narrow nose at me. Anger is churning behind those eyes, but his face is passive, displaying no emotion.
“Is this the agent I’ve heard so much about?” I turn to Marley coming down the stairs.
Marley doesn’t like strange men, she was sexually assaulted as a teen and avoids strangers for the most part. She must have been listening to our exchange upstairs and has decided that her discomfort is worth keeping the peace.
She stands next to me, and the pissed-off agent standing across from me looks between us. People have told us our whole lives we could pass for twins, but right now, Marley’s boobs are huge with milk since she had her own twins four months ago.
There’s no mistaking our boobs, that’s for sure. Even when she’s not full of milk, her boobs are still bigger than mine.
Even though I don’t plan to have kids, I’m still jealous of the cleavage she is sporting under her tank top, even if it is mostly milk. Another thing I’ve always envied is her round butt, she calls it a bubble butt, and she hates it, but I’ve always wished I had more curve in my backside.
But not enough that I would spend time in the gym every day to get it. I’m lazy that way, and I don’t like to sweat if I can help it. Because of her work with her horses and being in the stables all day every day, Marley is very toned.
Tipping my head, I swing my hand in his direction. “Marley, this is Special Agent Abbot. Apparently, he is here to infringe on my Fourth Amendment right, but he seems to force himself a lot, so this is pretty normal for him. Agent, this is my sister Marley.”
I think if we had a spit-roaster, I would be rotating over it right now based on the way his jaw is ticking. I smile sweetly, and he looks away from me and holds his hand out to Marley. “Nice to meet you, Mrs.?”
Marley takes his hand with a smile. “No need to be formal, just call me Marley.” She looks between us before she turns to me. “Have you offered Agent Abbot a drink or anything?”
“Agent. What brings you back?” Mason’s voice booms in the hall behind us.
The agent steps away from me and pulls the piece of paper he showed me from his pocket and hands it to Mason, who has planted his feet between me and Marley.
He reads it quietly, and I can see the twitch between his eyebrows. Marley and I look at each other and then back up to him. As if on cue, Jax comes down the stairs and looks over Mason’s shoulder to read the court order. His shirt has a big wet spot across his chest, and he smells like sour milk.
Mason looks at Agent Abbot as Jax takes the order from his hand to finish reading it. “Just how serious is this? I get the feeling you minimized the situation last night. A judge doesn’t order this type of protection without serious cause. And expedited.”
Abbot slides his hands in his pockets again and straightens his shoulders. “If we could talk somewhere.”
“Oh, no,” I say and step between them as I look up at Agent Abbot.
“You don’t get to go to another room and talk about something that directly affects me behind closed doors, like I’m not here.
” My pissed-off just swung into the red.
If there’s anything that makes my blood boil, it’s when the men congregate in another room, away from us mere females.
I know with all my heart that my brothers are only always trying to protect us, they are alpha to the core, and it comes from a place of love. But it still pisses me off.
My eyes narrow, and I stare up at him. “I think you might have the wrong idea about me, Special Agent. If you want to treat me like a delicate flower that might wither under a little heat, I’m warning you now, I will treat you like an intruder and show you the meaning of difficult. It’s a two-way fucking street.”
He called me difficult last night while driving me home. If there’s anything I’ve learned from being the middle sister between three sometimes obnoxious brothers, it’s how to be aggressively fucking difficult.
What surprises me is that Mason doesn’t say my name in warning like they always do when they think I’m out of line. I don’t show it, but I’m happy he agrees with me.
Abbot stares down at me in silence for long moments, his eyes locked on mine. “I’m part of a drug enforcement task force in Oklahoma, specifically the northeast part of the state.
“The case I’ve been working on for the past two years involves drug smuggling across the U.S.-Mexican border. It started out small-scale about a decade ago but has grown exponentially.”
His eyes never leave mine as he continues.
“A new player showed up a few years ago, and fentanyl deaths in the area have skyrocketed. He’s dangerous, and doesn’t care who lives or dies, as long as they don’t get in his way.
I’ve been investigating the organization, and the men you witnessed last night, who are no doubt looking for you, are part of that organization.
We were set up to apprehend them last night, to get intel from them. ”
I knew this was serious last night, I watched a man get killed.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve replayed that scene in my head a thousand times since last night, pushing it away each time, but to listen to him spell it out, painting the danger in my mind, is making my heart beat against my ribs.
The anger that was just making my head so hot minutes ago has evaporated like steam.
“Instead of getting the intel I desperately need, I had to stop them from getting to you. So, now I’m here to make sure you stay safe, and I can’t express enough how much I would like to transfer you to a safe place, not only for your safety but also for your family’s.”
My eyes drop to his Adam’s apple as I let what he just said sink in.
When I look back up into his eyes, he’s watching me closely, the anger is gone, but all his attention is on me.
I clear my throat. “So, in translation, I fucked up your case last night and now you’re stuck with me.
But the cherry on this shitshow is that my presence is a danger to my family.
That my home and everyone I love are in danger because I wanted some fresh fucking air. ”
His poker face is frozen in place, but his Adam’s apple bobs with a swallow. “That’s not what I said.”
“You can sugar-coat it all you want, Special Agent, but the ugly truth doesn’t change no matter how pretty you make it look.” I take a step away from him. Mason and Jax’s eyes are on me like hot lasers, I can feel it on my skin. I need to think. The last thing I want is to endanger my family.
“If you’ll excuse me, I need just a minute.” I say and turn to find my dad and Gray in the back, next to the stairs.
Walking past everyone, I go out the back door and walk to the barn. I need to talk to the one person who has ever truly understood me.
The hayloft is dusty and dirty and makes me sneeze every time I’m up here, but it’s private, and the large bricks of hay stacked on top of each other make me feel hidden so I can feel my feelings without an audience.
Stepping across the wooden floor in my bare feet, careful to avoid nails that have worked their way up from the wood, I sit on a bale of hay and look out the hay door to the pond behind Marley’s stables.
It also has a beautiful view.
Taking my phone out of my pocket, I press my brother Tucker’s number.
It’s never guaranteed he will pick up, he’s in the Air Force and sometimes, like Mason, he’s out on some kind of mission that won’t let him answer his phone.
He sent me a happy birthday text yesterday morning, but that was a long time ago in military time.
It rings four times, and I’m about to press the End button when he answers, humor in his deep voice. “Hey gorgeous, everything okay?”
There is music and talking in the background, and he sounds like he’s having a good time. I hesitate and wonder if I should bother him with this right now, but then I hear a door close on his end, and it gets quiet.
“What’s wrong?” All merriment is gone from his voice, and he’s turned into the protective brother.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt your good time, I should have texted first to see if you were busy.” I pick up a piece of hay and twist it in my fingers.
“No, you should never text first if you need me. I can hear it in your voice, something’s wrong. Tell me.”
I take a deep breath and catch him up on everything that has happened between now and last night. “I don’t know what to do, Tuck, I want to keep everyone safe, but I feel safer here at home.”
Tuck and I have always been close, there’s only a year between us, so we were almost the same age when Mom died. While Gray, Mason, and Marley were busy trying to take care of a newborn Breanna, my grieving dad, and the ranch, Tuck and I had each other.
“What does Mason say?”
“I haven’t talked to him yet, I needed to get out of there. I wanted to talk to you first. Last night when the agent dropped me off, Mason said I wasn’t going anywhere. But that was before everything that was said today.”
A low whistle sounds over the line. “Girl, if you didn’t have bad luck, you wouldn’t have any luck at all.” I can see him scrubbing his head with his fingers in my mind’s eye. “How do you feel about going with this FBI guy?”
I shrug my shoulders like he can see me. “I don’t know. He’s so serious, and he seems genuine, if not a bit controlling.”
I avoid using the word dominant because it makes me think of our brief encounter last night, when he dominated every part of me. Goosebumps make the hair on my arms stand on end.
“Most of those guys are.” He takes another deep breath. “Hey, I’m not in the U.S. right now, but I’m still on the continent. We’re heading back to base in the next couple of days. If you need me, I can be there in a matter of hours, okay?”
“That’s not why I called you, I know you can’t do anything. I guess I’m just a little scared, and I wanted to hear you tell me everything’s going to be okay.”
His voice softens. “Everything is going to be okay, hun. Mason, Gray, and Jax have your back, and it sounds like this FBI guy knows what he’s doing.”
A deep sigh escapes my chest. The sun is setting behind the trees on the other side of the pond, and everything is turning orange. The cicadas are buzzing, and the tree frogs are chirping; normally this would be a beautiful evening, but nothing feels beautiful right now.
“Tuck?”
“Yeah, hun.”
“Do you think I’m just extra weight on the family?”
His sigh of frustration travels over the line. It’s an insecurity I’ve always carried because the life I was born into is not something I care about at all. I’ve always felt like I’m just extra weight on my dad and Gray instead of a contributing member of the family.
It's always bothered me.
“No, I don’t. You’ve got to let this go, hun. Dad has always encouraged us to follow what is meant for us, and your path is your art. Just because you were born into the ranch life doesn’t mean it has to be forced on you. Dad knows that and has Gray and Mason to take care of the ranch.”
Letting out a big breath, I motorboat my lips.
He chuckles. “Feel better?”
I don’t really, but I don’t want to worry him. “A little.”
“Attagirl.”