Page 35 of Tempt Me

“Oh, yeah, just nothing wild.”

Once I get the green light for fucking, I step back and have them work on Hunter. As the doctor begins the preliminary exam, Aunt Fred appears to steal me away. Hunter immediately panics.

“It’s better this way,” Aunt Fred explains in her soft way. “Now, Tack will be done with club stuff by the time you’re finished with the doctor.”

Hunter wipes her wet eyes and nods at the logic behind Aunt Fred’s words. I smile at how even with her brain scrambled and her heart heavy, my woman can’t shake her rational side.

After offering Hunter a tender kiss, I follow Aunt Fred to the main farmhouse. Indigo sits on the front swing with his head in his hands. When I pat his back, he only shakes his head.

Trailing me, Siobhan doesn’t know what to do with herself while Hunter is checked over by the doctors. She settles on the porch swing next to Indigo and helps him deal with the day’s craziness.

Inside the kitchen, I find Noble at the sink. He’s covered in sweat and blood. I notice his arms are riddled with flesh wounds.

“They’re all dead,” Noble explains as he yanks off his blood-covered T-shirt and wipes himself down with the washcloth offered by Aunt Fred. “The guys from the Hills Chapter iced them all. They have zero finesse.”

Aunt Fred explains, “You know Caveman teaches his boys to bulldoze through every problem.”

Nodding, Noble offers her a little smirk. “Well, they bulldozed through our ability to shake down the attackers for info.”

“It’ll be okay,” she says and hands him a clean shirt. “Once their bodies have been identified, we’ll run down their backgrounds and connect their information to what we know about the other attackers. It’s bound to bring us closer to whoever hired them.”

“This thing is personal,” Noble insists as he settles in a chair and Aunt Fred patches up his smaller wounds. “No fucking way is someone going to this trouble for a ransom situation. The guys today were a top-notch merc team. They didn’t panic when we came in guns blazing. They never tried to use Hunter as a shield. They stayed on point. If the club hadn’t been there, Hunter would be gone.”

Noble takes a water bottle from Aunt Fred and chugs it. He’d do well to take a shower and cool down for a while, but that’s a luxury unavailable to a man in charge.

“The Knutsen staff looked like they’d been in a fucking meat grinder,” Elvis says as he enters the room after a quick shower. “The mercs’ guns aren’t legal anywhere. Whoever is doing this is rolling in cash.”

Aunt Fred hugs Elvis while Noble waves Siobhan into the room. “Is Indigo okay?

“He’s hurting over what happened,” she mumbles before getting sandwiched between her parents.

“It was a mess,” Elvis admits before asking her, “Are you okay, baby?”

“I’ve never seen Hunter like this before. She seems so broken.”

“She lost people today. It was madness out there,” he says before adding, “But we’ll wrap her up in our love here at the farm.”

“Is she still going to Hong Kong?”

“Suzanne wants to fly a chopper to the farm and pick her up for the airport,” Aunt Fred explains. “I didn’t know what to say about that.”

“No,” I answer, and everyone looks at me. “Suzanne’s just moving the problem to Hong Kong. Noble’s right. If the club hadn’t swooped in, Hunter would be gone.”

“Will she return to the estate?” Siobhan asks.

“There’s no team to protect her there.”

“Can she stay here?” Siobhan mumbles before teasing me with, “She can practice living with Tack.”

I offer a little smile to Siobhan who struggles with her tears.

Noble exhales hard and seems to center himself. “If we keep Hunter locked down here, the rich asshole likely won’t know how to find her. We can get the staff at the estate to act like she’s there. We can have the Knutsen jet take off. Make it harder for them to nail down her location. Meanwhile, we’ll use what we learned today to locate the one pulling the strings.”

“I don’t want to be a fly in the ointment here,” Elvis says as he strokes Siobhan’s head. “But we’ve got kids at the farm. Are we sure we want to risk their safety by keeping Hunter here?”

Siobhan frowns up at him, winning a kiss on her nose. I look to Noble and Aunt Fred. They glance at each other and then at me.

“Sending her away right now when her location isn’t known might be the smartest strategy,” Noble says. “But she can’t go to Suzanne or her sister. The rich asshole will track her down there.”

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