“Yeah, well, don’t get used to that. I’m about to send a shiver down your spine.”
“I’m guessing by the look on your face that’s not because you know a girl who can come and tickle my balls.”
“The Hut’s got plenty of those.”
“Only one who interests me.”
Eric paused, his eyes searching mine before he gave me a nod of, what I assumed, was approval. “Quite the little firecracker you’ve got there. Understanding, too. Especially about the whole Helen Taylor thing.”
I nodded to my chair, indicating that if he was here to chat, he should probably sit down. He did, taking my instruction and sinking into the seat opposite me.
“I keep waiting for something to tip her over the edge, something to make her think that this life isn’t for her,” I admitted.
“She isn’t going anywhere,” Eric said firmly, no mistakingin his voice that he meant it, either.
I sighed heavily, relief coming out like exasperation without intention. “Since being with me, she’s lost her childhood home, been assaulted, chased down, attacked, watched me almost die in a warehouse, covered up an explosion and the deaths of an entire enemy charter. She’s had to learn how to shoot, lost Harry…. She even killed two guys—one who once meant something to her. I shouldn’t have been as surprised to see her stand by me with the whole Helen thing, too, but I was.”
“Ayda loves you.”
“I know.” I stared back at him, feeling the weight of his three words gripping my heart and squeezing it tight.
“There’s a but on the tip of your tongue. Better set it free before it bites you.”
Whyhewas the person I was talking to about this, I had no fucking clue. “I know I’m a selfish fucker for letting her live this life with me, but I can’t live without her now. Can’t help but think that—”
“You should set her free?”
I didn’t respond, just stared straight at him and watched him as he sighed, shifted in his chair and cocked his head to one side. “Good luck with that. I tried to keep your mother out of this life for years. You know what happened? She ended up getting in even deeper. You push them away, they tend to push back harder until you’re the one slammed up against a wall with them holding your throat in their hands.”
“Mom was wild?”
“Fuck, was she wild.” He smiled with a tinge of sadness around his eyes. “Wilder than any of the boys even knew. Ayda reminds me of her in so many ways. She’ll get hurt withor without you around now, boy. You can’t turn a good girl bad and then expect her just to forget what the high of that naughtiness feels like. There’s no going back. Better to be by her side with a chance of saving her than to let her run free and get herself in trouble without you there.”
“Couldn’t let her go now even if I wanted to.”
Eric nodded repeatedly and pressed his lips together.
“Why you here, anyway?” I asked, scowling because I sure as shit knew he wasn’t in my office just to compliment my future wife. Wife. Hell! That sounded good.
“To ask what your long-term plan with Helen Taylor is.”
Straight to the point. That was one good thing about my father. He didn’t fuck around with wasted words.
“I have no idea,” I answered, honoring him with equal honesty. “For now, Helen can stay where she is. No one is looking for her. There have been no missing persons filed from what Sutton keeps telling us. That phone call we made her have with her daughters while they’re off traveling the world seemed to sate their curiosity of where the fuck she was. Doc’s checked out her bullet wound. She’s healing well. She’s safe.”
“But she’s still being held hostage.”
“Better by us than some of the other evil bastards out there that will no doubt be wanting to avenge Jon Taylor.” Eric’s jaw tightened, and I narrowed my eyes on him, sensing there was something more to this than he was allowing me to see. “What is it?”
“What?”
“That thing you’re not saying, which, by the way, is unlike you. So, let’s get straight to the point.”
“Fine,” he started, resting his elbow on the chair arm and running his finger over the top of his lip. “I think we need towork toward letting her go.”
“What?”
“Not now, but soon. You’re not going to kill her, are you?