Page 11 of Saint

“I agree,” nodded Saint. “Which is why we need to try and keep everyone here safe.”

“No argument from me,” said Aislinn. “If you don’t mind, I think I’d like to take a hot bath for a few hours, change my clothes, and sleep for a few days.”

“Let’s go, babies. We’ll drive you home,” smiled Irene. As the rest of the team waved goodbye, the VG crew stayed behind to talk.

“What do you think?” asked Hex.

“I trust Ghost and his opinion that they’re not dangerous. At least not to us. But their gifts are unimaginable,” said Luke.

“Are they?” smirked Saint. They all looked at him. “Listen, we have no less than two dozen certified geniuses here. We have engineers and technology experts who have created things no one understands. Your own grandparents are beautiful, wonderfully strange, and unique, and no one knows why. Let’s not start on the ghosts on the property, Gabe and Claudette, Miss Ruby, and Trak, and the animals. There is no end to the strange and amazing at Belle Fleur. Maybe this is where everyone was supposed to be. Maybe something was driving them here.”

“Or someone,” grinned Ben. Saint nodded.

“Or someone.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Are you tired?” whispered Saint to Marilisa. She smiled up at him, shaking her head.

“No. I’m relieved and happy beyond belief. I’m a little scared about what’s happening with all those people and with me. But I’m happy.”

“I’m glad you’re happy, honey. I won’t lie to you. It terrified me to see you faint like that. No clue on why that happened?”

“None,” she said, sighing. “I’ve been thinking about it since it happened. Griffin is probably twenty or twenty-five years older than I am, so it would be unlikely that we were ever in the same location.”

“Maybe they used his voice for something?” Saint asked more to himself than to Marilisa.

“I guess that’s possible. They were very specific about what they wanted us all to work on. Mine obviously had something to do with building, engineering, designing, usually destructive machines of some sort. As a child, I didn’t understand that at all. Now, it seems natural to me.”

Saint pulled her closer, tucking her beneath his arm. Speaking of natural, this felt more natural than anything he’d ever done in his entire life. She belonged right here in his arms. Her scent was making him crazy. Why had he never noticed her scent before? It was as if everything was amplified. Her smell, her voice, her body, all of it was making him crazy.

“You smell amazing,” he said in a low growl.

“Thank you,” she smiled up at him. “It’s a new fragrance by Avery. I love it.”

“I love it, too.”

“Saint? Why haven’t you ever had a serious girlfriend? Your mother said you’ve never brought anyone home, never dated anyone long term. Why? I mean, you’re obviously handsome, smart, charming. There had to have been women who wanted to date you.”

“First, thank you for saying all those very nice things. I suppose there were women who wanted more than one date. Maybe I knew. Maybe I knew that they weren’t what I wanted. I could never picture myself with any of them. My father instilled a lot of great things in me. Things I hope to instill in my own son one day.”

“I get that. It must have been hard moving from one location to another while you were serving in the Navy. I know what that can feel like.”

“Yes, but you had familiar friends, and so did I. Being with Pax, Brax, and Mav made everything better for me. It was as if I always had my brothers with me. What about you? Why no long-term boyfriends? Is that an obvious question?”

“No, I don’t think so,” she smiled. “There were others close to my age. Victoria was always crazy about Hayes, and I was happy for her about that. They were both incredibly awkward like the rest of us, and honestly, Hayes wasn’t exactly big, strong, and handsome as a kid.” She laughed, shaking her head.

“He’s changed a lot in the military,” smirked Saint. “We all do. You grow up fast. You learn to trust your teammates.”

“What if you don’t?” she frowned up at him. He stared at her. “I mean, what if you don’t trust a teammate? I agree you’re all amazing, but there has to have been incidences where there was a bad teammate. Someone who didn’t follow orders or was just a bad guy.”

“You know, I never thought of that much because I was on a killer team. But I know of men who didn’t have that kind of luck. One thing the SEALs teach you is that you don’t necessarily want the guy with the greatest skill level. He can often be self-absorbed and only worry about himself. You look for the guys you trust the most. If they made it through BUDs and Hell Week, you know they have the basic skills. If I trust a man one hundred percent, then the rest we can work on.”

“I like that,” she whispered. “We learned to be that way in our traveling band of misfits. Even when they were holding us hostage, pointing weapons at us, threatening us, we knew we could trust one another to not sell out the other. Early on, they weren’t even fully aware of our intelligence levels.”

“Didn’t they perform IQ tests on you?”

“They did, but we usually tried to flub them,” she smirked. “No one wanted to be the smartest person in the room. What happened, what happened to Stephanie, I think, was planned for all of us. Once they knew just how good we were, they would clone us.”

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