Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
Can anyone tell me whether the ‘skulls of your enemy’ are dishwasher safe?
—Beau to Magnolia
BEAU
“Oh, get the fuck out.” I snorted. “She was protecting herself with what she had readily available. We also informed you that she was scared and autistic. Two not-so-good combinations.”
The crowd was getting antsy, and I held up my hands and said, “We will follow you anywhere you need to go. But we need medical attention. You broke her arm when you threw her down.”
None of the officers looked upset.
The assholes.
The trainer of the Cowgirls said, “Bring her here. We can get it looked at.”
An hour and forty-five minutes later we were in a hospital and Iris was getting a cast that matched her mom’s. Iris was finally calmed, having only done so once she’d been administered some drugs that would calm her.
Oh, and she’d gotten her blood drawn via a court order to ascertain whether or not she was Magnolia’s child.
“What now?” Magnolia whispered.
“Apollo is on it,” I promised.
Apollo had flown home sometime last night, so he was able to get here before we had even arrived.
He also was armed with his laptop and a sheriff’s deputy of his own.
He was talking to him quietly, showing him the footage on his laptop of these so-called small-town cops that’d injured a child and caused such a stink that their faces were now plastered over every news station in America.
What they were thinking, coming into a professional soccer game with so many news crews around, I didn’t know.
Even worse, they’d harmed a child in the process. The child they were supposedly “protecting” from Magnolia.
“Is it…”
“Shh,” I urged. “Not here.”
She nodded, her face a mask of terror.
I pulled her into my arms and pressed a kiss to her forehead.
“It’ll be okay,” I whispered directly into her ear.
She clung to me, as Iris had done a couple of hours ago when I’d picked her up after she’d been hurt.
“All right, Mom,” the doctor said. “She’s good to go. I’m going to get the nurses working on the discharge…”
“She’s not going anywhere,” one of the cops that hadn’t left the room snapped.
The doctor ignored him and kept going, explaining what needed to happen for the first forty-eight hours.
Iris leaned up and held her arm out to Magnolia, who placed her injured arm next to her daughter’s. “Twinkies.”
Iris smiled, resilient despite all that had happened.
Fuck, that made me happy to see her no longer in abject terror.
“Results.” A nurse came in holding out a laptop.
The doctor glanced at it and rolled his eyes. “You owe her a huge apology, and you should probably hire a lawyer, because she’s going to sue the pants off this department.”
The second-most assholish cop stepped forward and said, “What the hell am I looking at?”
The doctor explained. “That means they’re a genetic match. She’s her mother.”
Oh, thank God. Apollo had gotten it fixed.
“I don’t know, maybe we need a second opinion,” the cop grumbled.
“We have one,” the nurse said. “The test was run twice. By this hospital and a neighboring hospital. They’re a match. Here’s the other hospital’s paperwork.”
The nurse handed him over a stack of papers, not that he knew what he was looking at.
Apollo gave me a chin jerk from the hallway and disappeared, leaving us ignoring the cops and talking to the doctor. “If it’s okay, we’ll take her right now.”
“It is,” she said. “We’ll get the paperwork to you in an email with instructions.”
The cop tried to step in front of me, but the sheriff’s deputy stepped in front of him, blocking his way.
“You have no right to detain them,” the cop said.
I read his name badge and it said “Q. Carter.”
“Thank you,” I said stiffly. “For your help, Officer Carter.”
He jerked his chin. “There’s a car out front waiting for you.”
I picked Iris up and caught Magnolia’s hand and led them out of the hospital and to the black SUV that was waiting for us.
Apollo was inside, along with a booster seat for Iris.
“Got all your things,” he said. “What a mess.”
“Agreed,” I grumbled as Magnolia said, “Thank you so, so much.”
“Anytime,” he said. “And I do mean it. Quincy was able to get them under control?”
“Yes.” I blew out a breath. “Thank you for bringing him with you. He was a big help. The other officers seemed to be intimidated by him.”
“A few years ago he was working for Dallas PD,” he said.
“But something happened that had him wanting a bit slower of a life than what Dallas Police Department could offer him. So he ran for sheriff of a small town about fifteen miles outside of Dallas and won. Now he gets his slower life, a bump in his pay, and still gets to live where he built a house years ago. I like him a lot, and he doesn’t always color between the lines. Which works really well for me.”
I’d bet it did.
Iris’s hand caught mine from her booster seat, and we held hands all the way to the airport.
“Did the team plane make it back in time?” I wondered aloud as Dallas passed us by.
“Nope.” Beau’s eyes twinkled. “We’ll be going back a different way.”
I had many questions, none of which he answered as we arrived at Dallas Fort Worth Airport, but didn’t go to any of the main terminals we would’ve used for commercial flights. Instead, Apollo took us to a small area with even smaller planes.
“What…”
Apollo pulled right in and stopped next to a plane the size of a thimble.
“What…”
“Meet Bessie,” Beau said. “She’s a Cessna 172 Skyhawk.”
“Hmmm…”
Beau shot me a boyish grin.
“Wow!” Iris cried.
“Now that’s what I wanted to hear.” He looked at me. “You can sit in the back since I don’t think you’ll quite appreciate her like Iris will.”
As he started getting everything in the plane, then got Iris situated literally in the front—sometimes I think he only liked me for my daughter—Apollo came to stand next to me.
“I’ll get everything covered on my end. You won’t have to worry about any real DNA getting out.
I’ll have everything wiped that shouldn’t be there by the end of the day.
And I’ll deal with the cops. They won’t be bothering you again. ”
I gave him a quick hug. “Thank you for all your help.”
He winked, then jerked his head toward Beau who was showing Iris all the dials and electronics in the plane.
“He’s like an overexcited child when it comes to that plane. He doesn’t get to go out in it as often anymore, thanks to his so-called sister forcing his hand with the Cowgirls. Make sure that you get him out in it as much as you can. He misses flying.”
“He flew?”
“In the Marines.”
I wanted to kick myself for not knowing that about him.
Sure, I’d known he was a Marine, but I’d never known that he’d flown planes for them.
To be completely honest, I hadn’t realized that the Marines even flew planes.
I thought they were all ground transport…
“I’ll talk to him about it all the way back,” I promised. “Thanks again, Apollo.”
He jerked his chin up and said, “Happy flying.”
I was more than happy to get in the back.
It gave me an uninterrupted view of him as he did all the pre-flight and then takeoff things.
Things that I had no clue what he was talking about, but they sounded crazy sexy anyway coming out of his mouth.
As he took off, he explained exactly what he was doing to not only me, but Iris as well.
Iris who was freakin’ obsessed. She had so many questions and it had me smiling huge the entire time from the back seat.
“Beau,” I said into the headset that was covering my head.
“Yeah, darlin’?” he asked, flicking his eyes back to me for a few seconds before returning it to the sky.
“What did you used to fly in the Marines?”
The grin that stretched the side of his face that I could see was nothing short of beautiful.
“Used to fly the KC-130J Hercules.” He smiled.
Apollo was right. He loved talking about flying.
He talked for the next hour about what he did in the Marines, and I could’ve hit myself for not asking him before. I felt like this was an integral part of him that I’d never known about. A part of him that I should’ve known about.
“How long will this flight be?” I asked.
“Well.” He winced. “It’ll take us a bit to get back. I’ll have to stop three times, maybe four depending on the weather. But probably closer to eleven hours.”
“Whoa,” I said. “That’s a long time.”
It proved to be a longer trip, but not by much.
Twelve and a half hours later, we touched down in Montana.
It was the best flight I’d ever taken.
Beau flew us over the Rockies, and he flew us around them to show them off at all angles.
Then he flew to all the spots that Iris pointed out along the way.
When we stopped first in Kansas, he took us to a small diner to grab a bite to eat while they refueled the plane.
The next stop just in the base of Wyoming, he took us to a milkshake hut where we stuffed ourselves with sweets.
The final stop was home.
Or, where the plane called home.
It was a hangar that was right outside Beau’s home. A building that I’d seen every day for the last few weeks but hadn’t thought to question what it was housing.
Iris hadn’t slept the entire time, her eyes wide and alive in a way that I’d never seen them before.
As we watched her skip her way back to the house, through a foot of snow I might add, I couldn’t help but say, “I love you for so many reasons, but one of the top ones is the way you love her.”
He ran his arm around my shoulder and pulled me into his side. “You two gave me a reason to live these last eight—nine—months. I love you, too, you know. More than I ever thought possible.”
I leaned my head against his chest as we walked side by side into the house.
Iris was still chattering away about altitude, wind speed, knots, and whatnot.
“You’ve created a monster.” I pointed at him.
He winked. “I’ll nurture this particular monster. I could use a flying buddy.”
As I lay down that evening in Beau’s arms, having made love to him quietly and slowly until we were both exhausted and on the verge of sleep, I made a simple wish.
One that was pretty damn simple. I wanted forever with this man. Iris and I deserved to be happy. Protected and loved in a way that only Beau could provide.