Page 207 of Bossy Hero

Me:

I’ll be on my best behavior.

Maddie:

You better be. Or I’ll take you over my knee.

Me:

You keep threatening that. Sadly, you haven’t delivered yet.

Maddie:

I’m proud of you, Alan. Say what you need to say to her so you can find peace. But behave and stay safe in the process. I love you.

Me:

Love you too. And I noticed how you didn’t comment on the other thing. I’m gonna circle back to it another time.

Maddie:

Ignoring that.

As I set my phone in the cupholder, Jonesy points his chin at it. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. Just Maddie reminding me to be on my best behavior.”

Junior chimes in from the back seat, his tone chipper. “Where’s the fun in that?”

We stop at a traffic light. My gaze does a circuit, scanning around the vehicle for threats. I notice Jonesy doing the same from the corner of my eye.

After the light turns green, he glances in the rearview. “Junior, you must be enjoying your break from babysitting duty.” He smirks at me, brows raised high. “Did you make him toss your salad to get off that detail?”

“Nobody’s tossing anybody’s salad.” I stifle my laughter, simultaneously horrified and amused by his joke. “Val is doing home school. She barely leaves HQ anymore unless it’s to go to the gun range. He’s better utilized with us.”

Junior jumps in to defend himself. “It’s not a bad gig. Val’s a good kid. So what if she’s a little dramatic at times? It’s no big deal. It isn’t her fault she was dealt a rough hand.”

Correction. He was defending Val, not himself. Every day, I grow more confident that he was the right choice to protect her.

Jonesy shrugs. “I don’t know, Boss. If I were in charge, I’d have made Junior stay there and guard her door. He hasn’t earned his stripes yet. And now, he’s out here, hanging with the big dogs.”

“This coming from a guy who got taken out by a cup of coffee,” Junior murmurs.

“Fuck you, little man,” Jonesy barks back, only a little heat in his tone.

My gut sinks at the memory of him getting drugged when he was guarding Val’s aunt at the hospital. She died on our watch. First time that’s ever happened to Redleg. Damn sure better be the last.

I’m not surprised they can joke about it. Dark humor is how most soldiers cope with bad shit. As long as they don’t do it around Val, I’ll let them process their issues however they need to.

Junior lightly shoves the back of the driver’s seat. “What’s your problem, man? Your cheeks chapped because your little girlfriend left you to come back to this shithole town?”

At that, my head cranes slowly toward Jonesy. With my brows drawn in tight, I glare at his profile, daring him to react to the accusation. To his credit, he barely flinches.

I clear my throat to prod a response out of him. All he does is glare in the rearview at Junior for ratting him out.

Growing impatient with his silence, I ask, “Do we have a problem, Jonesy?”

A solid three seconds pass before he meets my eyes. “She’s not our client anymore, is she?”

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