Page 18 of Claimed by Him

“Yep,” Jeremiah said proudly. “And I didn’t need any help with it either.”

“It’s okay to ask for help if you need it,” Jenna said, her smile softening. “But that’s great that you understood everything.”

“Does that mean I can go?”

“Two hours,” Rylan said. “Then it’s shower and bed.”

He nodded and hurried away, not wanting to waste a single moment of his game playing time.

“We brought some wine.” I held out the bottle. “I wasn’t sure what kind, so I just grabbed one and crossed my fingers.”

“I’ll get some glasses,” Jenna said as Rylan took the bottle. “I wasn’t sure if either of you had any food restrictions, so I went with variety. Salad, fruit salad, wedding soup, vegetarian lasagna, and baked chicken.”

My jaw sagged. “That’s a lot of food.”

Rylan stopped next to her and put his hand on the small of her back before bending down to kiss the top of her head. “I told her we’d be eating leftovers for the next week, but she wanted to make sure we had something for everyone.”

“We appreciate that,” Clay said as he stepped up next to me, sliding his hand around my waist.

Shit. Touching me like we were a couple was bad enough but answering for both of us was what told me that I wouldn’t be able to put off the discussion past tonight. Dinner, home, then talking.

I took a step forward, then reached for the salad bowl, like that was the entire reason I’d moved away from Clay. If I kept a little distance between us, things would be fine.

“I understand you work for the FBI,” Jenna said as she poured us each a glass of wine.

“I’m a profiler, yes,” Clay said as he accepted one of the glasses. “I used to be a guest lecturer at Quantico, but I recently decided I was ready for a change.”

“Does that mean you lived in Virginia then?” Rylan asked. “How’d you end up in Fort Collins?”

“I’m actually in Denver,” Clay explained.

Rylan’s eyes slid from Clay to me and back again, but he didn’t say anything else.

“Rona mentioned that you’re paired with Raymond Matthews,” Jenna said.

I raised an eyebrow. That seemed like an odd thing to have taken from our conversation yesterday.

“I am,” Clay said, his expression curious. “Do you know him?”

“I do.” Jenna glanced at me, a bit of color coming to her cheeks. “He and I have done some…work together. You’ll probably hear my name from him at some point.”

She’d done work with the FBI? It took me a moment, but then what I knew about Agent Matthews connected with what I knew about Jenna and the pieces fell into place. She helped him with his child pornography and human trafficking cases. Probably as a freelancer, or an off-the-books hacker.

For a moment, I wondered why she hadn’t asked him to track down her siblings, but then remembered what I realized myself when I’d gone into Child Services. He was bound by a different set of rules than I was. At some point, we might need some help from someone with some power, but it was better to have me doing the work right now.

“How is Agent Matthews doing?” Rylan asked.

As Clay answered their questions, I helped set the table and hoped that he would come to the same conclusion as me. Otherwise, I was in for a very unpleasant night.

* * *

“I like them,”Clay said as we drove back to my apartment. “When I first saw that house, I wondered what in the world we were going to talk about, but they’re really down to earth for people who have an insane amount of money.”

“Probably because they weren’t born to it,” I said absently as I stared out the window. “Rylan made his own fortune as a software designer. Jenna wasn’t rich before they got married, but she did have her own tech company.”

“And now she works with the FBI as a consultant,” he said, shaking his head. “Only you would find a way to work around being kicked out of the agency.”

“I wasn’t looking for a workaround,” I said honestly. “I had no idea she had any connection beyond what had happened to her.”

---