Page 17 of Past Due

“She just had heart surgery!” His head pounded as he imagined Marley, still weak from surgery, climbing the rocky slopes.

“It was done in a cath lab! She’s not an invalid! She’s perfectly healthy!”

“We’ll agree to disagree on that,” he muttered. “Please tell me she’s hiking with a group?”

Aston hesitated again. “Not exactly.”

He gritted his teeth. “She’s hiking alone?”

“Yes.”

On the verge of absolutely losing his shit, Besian handed back her phone. Images of Marley injured in the woods or crumpled at the bottom of a steep fall raced through his mind. His stomach churned. What if something worse than a fall had happened? What if she had been robbed? Assaulted? Kidnapped?

“What are you doing?” Aston asked as he hurriedly logged off and shut down his computer.

“I’m going to get her and bring her home.”

Aston seemed startled. “You’re going to Albania?”

“Why else did you come here?” He slipped back into his suit jacket and grabbed his keys, wallet and gun from the top drawer of his desk. “Isn’t this what you expected I would do?”

“No! I thought you would make a call or something! Not run off in the middle of the night to Albania!”

“This isn’t something that can be handled with a phone call.” He gestured for her to stand. “You go home. If Marley contacts you, tell her to stay where she is and wait for me.”

“And if she doesn’t?” Aston asked nervously.

“I’ll find her,” he swore and gave her shoulder a squeeze. “I won’t come back to Houston without her.”

Aston shocked him by hugging him without warning. He wasn’t the kind of man who liked intimate touch like this, and he awkwardly patted her back. “Thank you so much for taking this seriously.”

“You’re welcome.” He didn’t tell her that anything to do with Marley was serious to him. “Let me walk you out to your car.”

Surprisingly, she didn’t argue. Now that she had gotten what she wanted, Aston probably realized how upset Ben was going to be when he found out she had stormed her way into a strip club. He didn’t envy Ben trying to tame this wildcat he had chosen as his partner for life. Wealthy and spoiled by her late father, Aston wasn’t about to let any man curb her independence.

When they neared her vehicle, he was glad to see that she hadn’t driven something from her father’s obscenely expensive collection. Tonight, she was in the new Mercedes GLS she had recently purchased from one of Alexei Sarnov’s dealerships. He had questioned the couple’s decision to buy something that nice for a baby that was likely to destroy the entire second row with crumbs, milk and juice, but had kept his opinion to himself. Nothing good would come from arguing with Aston.

“Uh-oh.” Aston grabbed his sleeve and gave it a shake. “The Red Menace is here.”

Kostya.He eyed the Russian cleaner-cum-underboss who gazed menacingly in their direction. “Don’t let him hear you call him that.”

“What’s he going to do? Chop me up into little pieces and feed me to some sharks? Toss me into a vat of acid and make some gooey human soup?”

Besian grimaced. “You watch too much TV.”

“Ugh,” she groused. “You sound just like Ben.”

“More like Ben sounds just like me.” He walked her to the SUV, made sure she was safely inside and pulling out of the parking lot before he joined Kostya near his black Audi. “I take it you’re not here to check up on our club.”

“No.” Kostya scanned their surroundings with his hawkish glare. “I’m here for the same reason Ben’s baby mama was.”

He grimaced at how low-class that sounded. Ben needed to do the right thing and do it soon. He needed to marry Aston and give his baby the stability of the two-parent home he’d never had.

“Marley,” Kostya said, as if Besian couldn’t put two and two together.

“No shit?” he snapped back.

Kostya smirked. “So touchy about this girl.”

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